Changing Text Trrough Autoenter

[johnrh]

I am trying to set up a field so that no matter how users enter information it will be corrected through autoenter in order to ensure standardization.

All the information needs to be in one text field.

Users may enter information in a veriety of ways such as

4x100 or

10 x100 or

14x 1200 etc.They might even additional spaces betwween or leave them out etc.

I need field to have just a single space between each amount (i.e 4 x 100 etc.).

I think this ought to be able to be done with an autoenter calc but cant see how to do it. can anyone help please?

Tnanks

[omegagoh]

Dear John,

You are possibly a Maths teacher for the young Kids.

While your request may seem straight forward, the actual work is not.

I suggest you visit the following URL for FileMaker Calculation Formatter (This is the closest alternative I have for you):

http://www.aptworks.com/tools/

Chances is you may need a (complex) custom function or plug-in to achieve what you wanted.

For a list of custom functions, you may visit the following URL (unfortunately, they are not categorized, so may not easy to find what one's is looking for):

www.briandunning.com/filemaker-custom-functions/list.php

For a FM plug-in, you may visit the following URLs:

developer.filemaker.com/solutions/ (then search for "plugin"), or

filemaker-plugins.com

I am sorry to say that chances are you may not find a solution to your problem ( I searched many more URLs and didn't find one). Anyway, hope that the above URLs are good resources for FileMaker, happy exploring!

Regards,

Omega Goh

I am trying to set up a field so that no matter how users enter information it will be corrected through autoenter in order to ensure standardization.

All the information needs to be in one text field.

Users may enter information in a veriety of ways such as

4x100 or

10 x100 or

14x 1200 etc.They might even additional spaces betwween or leave them out etc.

I need field to have just a single space between each amount (i.e 4 x 100 etc.).

I think this ought to be able to be done with an autoenter calc but cant see how to do it. can anyone help please?

Tnanks

[Raybaudi]

I need field to have just a single space between each amount (i.e 4 x 100 etc.)

Try:

Substitute ( TrimAll ( Lower ( Self ) ; 1 ; 1 ) ; "x" ; " x " )

[comment]

Users may enter information in a veriety of ways such as

4x100 or

10 x100 or

14x 1200 etc.They might even additional spaces betwween or leave them out etc.

If all they will ever enter is the multiplication of two numbers, then this could be very simple*. However, it would be much better to enter the numbers into two separate fields.

---

(*) As Daniele has shown in the meanwhile.

Edited December 22, 2010 by comment

[Vaughan]

Wouldn't the Evaluate() function be good here? Teach the users that the maths operators for multiply and divide are * and / or create substitute functions to fix their entires. Then just evaluate the lot. White space is ignored.

Lots of opportunity for mischief though, since it opens up the FMP equivalent of sql injections.

[omegagoh]

Dear Vaughan,

You are right to say that Evaluate( ) will produce the result and ignore the spaces. However, as an educator ( I was a Maths teacher ), ones also concern about the presentation. It is therefore important to train the students to present their working as "reasonable" as possible right from the beginning. On the other hand, it is also not realistic to expect all students to do it right initially, hence IT can be of help for these little irritating problems an educator is facing.

I think Daniele shown a excellent simple version of what is expected of. However, as the grades (usually, a Maths teacher is required to teach a few levels) gets higher, it is insufficient. Thus, the expectation may be fulfilled by features as illustrated by FileMaker Calculation Formatter at http://www.aptworks.com/tools/. Unfortunately, it was not convert to a custom function or plug-in.

Should anybody come across one, please update me. Thanks.

Regards,

Omega Goh