Char Value Contains Value

[RD_Man]

Happy Friday,

In progress I want to check if a column contains a specific value. Example: '12345-A-001', '23146-P-006', '23-9-P'.

I want to find any record with '-P' in it anywhere. I searched "contains" with no luck (previous experience operator).

Thanks,

Mike

 

[jdpjamesp]

If the separators are always going to be '-' then you can try

IF LOOKUP("P",lvList,"-") GT 0 THEN
/*We have a P*/
ELSE
/*We don't have a P*/

 

[AndrewSmith]

Or, if your list doesn't have guaranteed delimiters, use the INDEX function:

DEFINE VARIABLE cString AS CHARACTER   NO-UNDO.
 
cString = "23146-P-006".
 
MESSAGE INDEX(cString,"-p")
    VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX INFO BUTTONS OK.

 

[RD_Man]

Thanks to both of you.

Both options work and have merit in different applications for me.

Have a great weekend!

 

[palthe]

Happy Friday,

In progress I want to check if a column contains a specific value. Example: '12345-A-001', '23146-P-006', '23-9-P'.

I want to find any record with '-P' in it anywhere. I searched "contains" with no luck (previous experience operator).

Thanks,

Mike

The operator you were looking for is "matches".

so, a third option might be:

def var cvalue as char no-undo.

cvalue = "-p-althe".

if cvalue matches string("*-p*") then message "yeah baby".
else quit.

 

[RD_Man]

Yeah Baby!, that works great also.

Thanks!

 

[TomBascom]

Just don't expect it to be fast for anything more than fairly trivial amounts of data.

If you were to, for instance, try something like:

for each customer no-lock where name matches "*-p*":
  /* do something interesting with customers... */
end.

And if you had, say, a million customer records that query is going to take a very, very long time to run.

 

[RD_Man]

Tom,

Thanks for the follow up. I will note the speed issue. For my immediate need, I am finding my data via indexes for speed but once found I needed to categorize the data based on the (-?) values.

Mike