Hello Spencer,

For the special characters there is a chart in the FAQ at http://www.lantica.com/Support/KBase/sesame_faq.html that shows how to make them

For the search, I believe something like ">a & <zzzzzzz" (without the quotes) would work. I could be wrong about this.

You can loop through a string and use @Asc() to see what a character is and the case of that character. So you can see if the 9th character of 'Silver sOlutionS of Tampa, Inc' is a 111 instead of a 79.

-Ray

Hello Spencer,

Two ways, that I can think of right now, you can make that retrieve spec. I'm sure there are others.

1. Retrieve all your records. Run a Mass Update on them. The mass update parses out the phone number field and looks for any alpha characters. If none are found then it removes the record from the result set. Is some Alpha characters are found then if advances to the next record.

2. A programmed retrieve spec with 26 @Instr() calls in it. One for each letter in the alphabet.

-Ray

To find if there are letters in a LE (a telephone number, for example), you can put:

..a..;..b..;..c..;..d..;..e..;..f..;..g..;..h..;..i..;..j..;..k..;..l..;..m..;..n..;..o..;..p..;..q..;..r..;..s..;..t..;..u..;..v..;..w..;..x..;..y..;..z..
 

in the retrieve spec LE (please note that the above should all be on one line, not broken into two lines!). Or your can use on open retrieve spec programming and use:

var aa as int
var str as string

str = ""
for aa = 0 to 25
	str = str + ".." + @chr(97 + aa) + "..;"
next
zip = str
 

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Be careful when cutting and pasting from the forum, in that the forum software can insert linefeeds and spaces that you do not want.
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Its the LE name of the LE I was using (in Customers.db) to test the spec. Use the appropriate LE names from your form in its place.
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On retrieve spec open programming runs when the retrieve spec opens and includes the entire SBasic language. You can use it to write into the retrieve spec form itself. It is often used to make retrieve specs dynamic based on information that has already been collected. For example, if you want a user named "Bob" to search for last names that only start with "A", you could write a retrieve spec open program that checks which user is logged in:

if(@User = "Bob")
{
  LastName = "A.."
}
 

When Bob opens the retrieve spec form, the program will run, it will check if this is Bob, and if it is, it will write "A.." into the LastName LE on the retrieve spec form. If Bob then hits F10, Sesame will search for records that have a LE "LastName" that starts with the letter "A".

In short, its a way to create retrieve specs dynamically.

Retrieve programming (in the curly braces), on the other hand, is a subset of SBasic and must result in an expression. It is sent from client to the server, where it is run by the actual data engine on the server for each record. There , the expression is either checked for "truthfulness" (i.e.: "{MyField = YourField}"), or it is checked against a field in each record (i.e.: "={YourField}", placed in the MyLE LE). The important things to remember about retrieve spec programs is that thery are run on the server for each record, that they use field names as opposed to LE names, and that there are two legal syntaxes: ={expression}, that checks the field it appears in against the result of the expression, and {expression} that simply checks if the expression is true.

So if you have a date LE, you could put:

={@Date}
 

in that LE and it will check the field against the current date. Or you could put:

{MyDateField = @Date}
 

in any LE, and the engine will check the field "MyDateField" against today's date.
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