hi all,

I have several records with text in a text field like this...
"Yellow Category, Red Category"
(without the quotes)

I want to find any record with yellow and red in the same sentence.
Thinking the wildcards would work I try this

new find
*yellow*red*
new find
*red*yellow*
preform find

but it never finds anything! try it, you will see.
what is up with wildcards? and how can I achieve this search?

thanks

On 2009-09-21 08:53:42 -0700, Tim <tswalton@gmail.com> said:

> I have several records with text in a text field like this...
> "Yellow Category, Red Category"
> (without the quotes)
> 
> I want to find any record with yellow and red in the same sentence.
> Thinking the wildcards would work I try this
> 
> new find
> *yellow*red*
> new find
> *red*yellow*
> preform find
> 
> but it never finds anything! try it, you will see.
> what is up with wildcards? and how can I achieve this search?

I think you have a misunderstanding of the basics of finding in 
Filemaker. Perhaps some time spent with the help file? Or a manual?

In brief, Filemaker does a word search from the beginning of a word, 
for any string you put into a field. If you put multiple words in a 
field, FM will search for all of them. There is no order to the search, 
though.

So for your desired searching a single request with "red yellow"  in 
the field will work. That is an AND search in FM.

An OR search would enter, in the same field:

Enter find
"red"
new request
"yellow"
perform find

WIld card characters are used to find a string after the beginning of 
the word or for strings followed by anything, so if you wanted to find, 
in a field that may contain "blue-green" and "yellow-green", you could 
do a find for "*green".

When you enter find mode, in the status bar you'll find a pulldown for 
all the symbols you can enter during finds, such as "!" to find 
duplicates in a field or "==" for exact matches. These might be of 
assistance if you look them up in the help file and see how they are 
used in FM. It's not the same as a search engine.

-- 
Lynn Allen
--
www.semiotics.com
Member FBA
FM 10 Certified Developer

The wildcard does not recognize the space (for some unexplained reason). 
   You can instead just search for  "red* yellow*" (without the quotes) 
and it will find all the "Yellow Category, Red Category" AND "Red 
Category, Yellow Category".

Tim wrote:
> hi all,
> 
> I have several records with text in a text field like this...
> "Yellow Category, Red Category"
> (without the quotes)
> 
> I want to find any record with yellow and red in the same sentence.
> Thinking the wildcards would work I try this
> 
> new find
> *yellow*red*
> new find
> *red*yellow*
> preform find
> 
> but it never finds anything! try it, you will see.
> what is up with wildcards? and how can I achieve this search?
> 
> thanks

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:15:14 -0700, Lynn Allen wrote:
>  On 2009-09-21 08:53:42 -0700, Tim <tswalton@gmail.com> said:
> 
> > I have several records with text in a text field like this...
> > "Yellow Category, Red Category"
> > (without the quotes)
> > 
> > I want to find any record with yellow and red in the same sentence.
> > Thinking the wildcards would work I try this
> > 
> > new find
> > *yellow*red*
> > new find
> > *red*yellow*
> > preform find
> > 
> > but it never finds anything! try it, you will see.
> > what is up with wildcards? and how can I achieve this search?
> 
>  I think you have a misunderstanding of the basics of finding in 
>  Filemaker. Perhaps some time spent with the help file? Or a manual?
> 
>  In brief, Filemaker does a word search from the beginning of a word, 
>  for any string you put into a field. If you put multiple words in a 
>  field, FM will search for all of them. There is no order to the search, 
>  though.
> 
>  So for your desired searching a single request with "red yellow"  in 
>  the field will work. That is an AND search in FM.
> 
>  An OR search would enter, in the same field:
> 
>  Enter find
>  "red"
>  new request
>  "yellow"
>  perform find
> 
>  WIld card characters are used to find a string after the beginning of 
>  the word or for strings followed by anything, so if you wanted to find, 
>  in a field that may contain "blue-green" and "yellow-green", you could 
>  do a find for "*green".

Do you have any special language setup? The "-" might be considered as a
word delimiter. Thus a search for "green" could be good enough.
Untested.

But the wildcard would help for blue-lightgreen...

BTW: what does "." have for a special function within search terms?
I noticed that a search for e.g. "Dr." is much slower than a search vor
"Dr". Is it handled as a non-alphanumerical-character (A-Z, 0-9 and
maybe e.b.  �, �, ...)? This could be that the search then will try a
literal match, instead of a simple and indexed alphanum matching.

I did not note this slowdown vor "-", while I never tried for other
special characters, since others usually are not included.

- Martin

On Sep 21, 5:15=A0pm, Lynn Allen <l...@NOT-semiotics.com> wrote:
> On 2009-09-21 08:53:42 -0700, Tim <tswal...@gmail.com> said:
>
> > I have several records with text in a text field like this...
> > "Yellow Category, Red Category"
> > (without the quotes)
>
> > I want to find any record with yellow and red in the same sentence.
> > Thinking the wildcards would work I try this
>
> > new find
> > *yellow*red*
> > new find
> > *red*yellow*
> > preform find
>
> > but it never finds anything! try it, you will see.
> > what is up with wildcards? and how can I achieve this search?
>
> I think you have a misunderstanding of the basics of finding in
> Filemaker. Perhaps some time spent with the help file? Or a manual?
>
> In brief, Filemaker does a word search from the beginning of a word,
> for any string you put into a field. If you put multiple words in a
> field, FM will search for all of them. There is no order to the search,
> though.
>
> So for your desired searching a single request with "red yellow" =A0in
> the field will work. That is an AND search in FM.
>
> An OR search would enter, in the same field:
>
> Enter find
> "red"
> new request
> "yellow"
> perform find
>
> WIld card characters are used to find a string after the beginning of
> the word or for strings followed by anything, so if you wanted to find,
> in a field that may contain "blue-green" and "yellow-green", you could
> do a find for "*green".
>
> When you enter find mode, in the status bar you'll find a pulldown for
> all the symbols you can enter during finds, such as "!" to find
> duplicates in a field or "=3D=3D" for exact matches. These might be of
> assistance if you look them up in the help file and see how they are
> used in FM. It's not the same as a search engine.
>
> --
> Lynn Allen
> --www.semiotics.com
> Member FBA
> FM 10 Certified Developer

Hi Lynn, I've seen your name on these forums for years and years!
Thanks for your help.
Oddly I would describe myself as an FMP expert, but I've honestly
never understood what you've just described. I spend many hours in SQL
Server you see and have a more traditional view of wildcards. What FMP
does is weird, unique, but fantastic all at the same time.
This is now committed to memory.
Thanks
Tim
:-)

On 2009-09-21 14:01:48 -0700, C10B <tswalton@gmail.com> said:

> Hi Lynn, I've seen your name on these forums for years and years!
> 

That's because I've been here since the inception of cdf. :) With a 
hiatus when things got a bit busy, but I'm back now.  Much older, not 
much wiser.

> Oddly I would describe myself as an FMP expert, but I've honestly
> never understood what you've just described. I spend many hours in SQL
> Server you see and have a more traditional view of wildcards. What FMP
> does is weird, unique, but fantastic all at the same time.
> This is now committed to memory.

Good. Because there will be a test. ;)
-- 
Lynn Allen
--
www.semiotics.com
Member FBA
FM 10 Certified Developer