Mark -
Quote:No. That is incorrect. A single period has no meaning to Sesame and does not need to be escaped - though a double period does.
So, if you have a field that says: "Mary.Lister" and you create a search spec for that field that says "Mary.Lister", Sesame will find the record that has that field saying "Mary.Lister" without anything being backslashed or escaped.
I disagree with you on this point, and I think it may be that we are each using different search criteria from the other. It sounds to me like you are specifically entering "Mary.Lister" and I agree with you that that will work.
However, my objective is to find any field that has one (or more) "dots" (periods, whatever you call it) in a field in a record.
So, in my "test" database, I have:
mary . spencer
Spencer .. Mark
Spencer .. Mary
Spencer..Mary
mary spencer.
If I use ..... (two dots for a "wild card", one dot that I want to find and two more dots for a "wild card"), sesame only retrieves the record:
I can retrieve all appropriate records by using ..\...
or (CONGRATULATIONS TO ME (thanks to your feedback), I FOUND A MEANINGFUL USE FOR [ TO WORK)
I can also retrieve all appropriate records by simply using [.
With regard to your example of using [ I still don't get it. Sorry!
If a record contains:
Mary..A..Lister..Billingsham..Wadsworth
and I want to find only that record, I can simply enter a retrieve spec of:
Mary..A..Lister..Billingsham..Wadsworth
and the [ is not needed.