How to Quickly Find Carriage Returns in a Field?

[HazMatt]

I'd like to verify that a number of fields do not have any carriage returns (¶) in them.  I already have an auto-enter calculation that I am adding to each field to prevent this from happening in the future.

 

One solution is to create a secondary calc field that will return "1" if a carriage return is detected in 'FieldName':

PatternCount(FieldName; "¶") > 0

If I search for "1" in this secondary field it works great (and I can fix individually or quickly via Replace Field Contents), but changing the calculation is tedious to do for a large number of fields.

 

Is there instead a way I can enter Find Mode and enter something directly in the field I'm interested in fixing up?  I've tried the following, but no records are found:

• ¶
• "¶"
• ¶
• Char(13)
• *"¶"
• dat pilcrow

[comment]

This is not easy to enter manually*, but using a script you can do:

Enter Find Mode [  ]
Set Field [ Table::Textfield; ""¶"" ]
Perform Find [  ]

--

(*) You need to enter an actual carriage return in between the quotes, but in Find mode this would trigger the Perform Find action - so I believe the only way to do this manually is to paste it.

[HazMatt]

comment, you're a genius.  Copying and pasting "¶" (where the ¶ is the invisible character, of course) does work manually, and your suggestion to use a script got me thinking…  So, here's my script:

 

Script Name:  Find All Records with "¶" In Current Field

#
If [IsEmpty(Get(ActiveFieldName))]
  # Cursor not in any field
  Beep
  Show Custom Dialog [Get(ScriptName); "Please place your cursor in an active text field and try again."]
  Exit Script []
End If
#
# Attempt the find
Enter Find Mode []
Set Field By Name [Get(ActiveFieldTableName) & "::" & Get(ActiveFieldName); ""¶""]
Set Error Capture [On]
Perform Find []
#

Include this script in the menu, and now all I have to do is hit Command-6 (in my case) to immediately get what I want.  Perfect!

[comment]

A small nitpick and a caveat:

 

 

This:

Set Field By Name [ Get(ActiveFieldTableName) & "::" & Get(ActiveFieldName); "abc" ]

does exactly the same thing as:

Set Field [ "abc" ]

Both rely on the cursor staying in the active field when you switch to Find mode.

 

When will this assumption fail? When the active field is a global field. In such case, the first version will throw a "This action cannot be performed because the required table is missing." error, while the second one will fail silently.