Hi,
Is it possible to escape the standard character patterns when using the
LIKE search in Retrieve?

I wish to search for a specific value: '49x Vanguard Street' in the
column ADDRESSS, in a file called PROPERTY.

However, every when I use ADDRESS LIKE "49x Vanguard Street" it doesnt
match my record. This is because universe takes the 49x to mean 49
characters long.

And I cant see any way to escape this behaviour.. surely it exists..
but its not in the docs..
I've tried various combinations of \ and & but no luck.

Can anyone help
Thanks,
Graeme.

graeme.robb (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Not exactly what you're asking, but perhaps
SELECT PROPERTY WITH ADDRESS LIKE "49... Vanguard Street"
or
SELECT PROPERTY WITH ADDRESS = "49x Vanguard Street"
where the first is going to do matching, and the second is going to do
an exact check.

I'd test these for you, but I don't have a machine running universe
handy at the moment...


--
Allen Egerton
aegerton at pobox dot com

LIST ADDRESS LIKE "'49X' Vanguard Street"

(49x enclosed in single quotes) works on Universe

Thanks Allen,

Unfortnuately I require the wild card after the 'Vanguard' in both
cases. (ie match Vanguard street and Vanguard road)
This means I have to use the 'like' keyword.. but when I use like it
interprets the '49x' to mean 'all strings with 49 characters' .. so I'm
unable to get it to find records with the literal value '49x'.

try this

LIST filename WITH ADDRESS LIKE "'49'...'Vanguard Street'"

Rich

graeme.robb (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

Spot on. This is exactly what I needed
Thanks very much.

I haven't seen this solution yet.....

Try:

SELECT PROPERTY WITH ADDRESS = "49]" AND WITH ADDRESS = "[VANGUARD ST"

The [ and ] are wildcard characters meaning (I think) leading and trailing
characters of any sort, but you use the = sign rather than the LIKE
operator. I ran into a similar problem as you are having using LIKE a
couple of years ago, and was shown this method. Been using it ever since.

The above example will return addresses like:

49x VANGUARD ST
49y VANGUARD ST
4987 VANGUARD ST

and so on. If you just want to match the beginning and/or end of a string,
you can do it without the second WITH clause:

SELECT PROPERTY WITH ADDRESS = "[VANGUARD]"

will return everything with VANGUARD in its address.

Hope this helps.

Mitch


<graeme.robb (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote