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 (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

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:

On Sep 21, 5:15*pm, Lynn Allen <l... (AT) NOT-semiotics (DOT) com> wrote:
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 (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

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.

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