Hello Spencer,

Yes we are aware of it and Yes it is documented

Page 224, 229, 235 of the Sesame 1.1 User Guide show the special search characters.

I believe both of those characters are carried over from the Q&A search syntax, so it is unlikly that they will be changed.

-Ray

Hi -

OK - my first reaction is that we need to quickly convert all Q&A users to Sesame so that we don't have to be bound by Q&A's previous restrictions.  lol  Since that's not likely to happen in the immediate future, it would be very helpful to have concise illustrations of [b][i]all[/i][/b] the special search characters that might be required.  

I checked the references you gave me, Ray, and did not find a complete, comprehensive listing.  I did pick up the equal sign ( = ) as another special character; however I did not see the forward slash ( / ) listed (per se).   So, I am now intrested in hearing from anyone who is aware of any special search needs.

I was trying to come up with at least a partial listing, but it is turning out to be more complicated than I thought.  So ... when I get something worth listing, I will do so and I will modify it whenever I have something new to add.

In the meantime, Erika, I am confused about the left bracket ( [ )character and how I can use it.

For example, supppose that I have a field entry of

Spencer?  Mary

I can find the appropriate record (and no others)  by searching using ..\?..

but I am not able to find the record using  ..[?..

Am I misunderstanding what you meant by saying that the [ works with ?       ??????

Guess I know what I'll be "playing" with into the wee hours of the morning (yet again). lol

The "]" was already taken. It is used to perform a text search in non-text fields. From the manual:
Quote:


That "[" causes most of the special characters to be "escaped" - as though you had put a backslash in front of each of them.

That is one of the ironies of DOS. When MS decided to use the backslash as the directory separator, most OSs and most computer languages had standardized that as the "escaping" character. Thereby, MS created one of the biggest incompatibilities in computer history.

Spencer,

Erika is getting ready for another road trip teaching classes in Toronto and Dallas - so you are stuck with me.

The "[" character disables most of the special characters that follow it till the end of the line. So, if you say:

[M.. 

It will only match a LE that has an M followed by two periods in it (and nothing else!). In other words, it is looking for a LE with "M.." in it exactly.

In the example, you have given "Spencer..Mary" as being in the LE. To find that without knowing the names, use "..\.\..."

The backsplash only escapes one set of the search characters. The "[" escapes all of the search characters (Erika listed) until the end of the line.

Grrr

With regard to the .. search, I am more confused than ever before.

I could swear that I tried the retrieve spec you suggested, Mark, for retrieving two dots and that it retrieved more records than just the one containing two dots.  In any event, I just tried it again and it appears to work correctly. 

Mark - I only mentioned Erika because she is the one who posted the use of [ - to indicate that the following character should be treated as literal - in a retrieve spec; I could not, however, get it to function that way.  So, once again, if anyone can given an example of using it, I would be happy to try it.

Now I am even confusing myself.

Marc -  I [b]know[/b] that recently I had tried searching for // and it would not work unless I typed ..\/\/..

YET, I just tried it using ..//.. and it worked just fine.  Is it possible you "fixed" (or changed) something in the most recent release of verion 1.1.3 ?  

Hi -

Let me see if I can clarify my comments because I would like to hear very specific examples that could be of general value to myself and others.

First, I should have clarified that my searches at this point have been within a text LED, so please keep in mind that my specific illustrations are in regard to doing a search on a text LED field.  Also, I have not seen any difference in behavior (other than that expected) of performing the search in a specific field or using the universal search mode to perform the search on any or all fields.

1)  No matter what situations I try to set up, I cannot get the [ character to work.  I would really appreciate knowing something I could type into a text field and then retireve it using the [ and not simply using     ..something..  I would like an example of something I can specifically type into a text field ... and what I would need to specifically type into the retrieve spec ... to achieve the desired result.

Specifically here is what I found will not work when using a typical wildcard search unless you bring into play the \ character.

2)  If I want to find \ within a field

• \ retrieves nothing
• ..\.. retrieves nothing
• ..\\.. produces the desired result

3)  If I want to find = within a field

• = retrieves all blank records (as expected)
• ..=.. retrieves nothing
• ..\=.. produces the desired result

4)  If I want to find & within a field

• & retrieves nothing
• ..&.. retrieves all records
• ..\&.. produces the desired result

5)  If I want to find . within a field

• . retrieves nothing
• ..... retrieves records with ending . (as does ..\.)
• ..\... produces the desired result

6)  If I want to find ? within a field

• ? retrieves records with field containing one character (as expected)
• ..?.. retrieves records with non-blank field (as expected and as will /=)
• ..\?.. produces the desired result

7)  If I want to find .. within a field

• .. retrieves all records including blanks
• ...... retrieves all records including blanks
• ..\.\... produces the desired result

So, at this point, I am basically asking for three things:

1)  A precise example of how I can set up a situation where [ would be used in the retrieve spec (as discussed in point 1 above)

2)  Additional examples, such as I gave (in points 2 through 7 above) of a character you could not find within a field, using a simple wildcard search and

3)  How (in the case of 2 immediately above) you would perform the search to get the desired results.

I've tried my darndest to make both my request, and the information I am sharing, as clear as possible and hope this will enable some feedback that is directly "on point" (along with the other "stuff" that has been very informative and helpful).

Thanks!

[quote author=SpencerWulwick  link=1133387185/0#11 date=1133400014]Now I am even confusing myself.

Marc -  I [b]know[/b] that recently I had tried searching for // and it would not work unless I typed ..\/\/..

YET, I just tried it using ..//.. and it worked just fine.  Is it possible you "fixed" (or changed) something in the most recent release of verion 1.1.3 ?  [color=Red]Would still like feedback on this point.  Thanks![/color][/quote]


Spencer,

Nothing was changed in 1.1.3 in regards to searching for '//' in an element. I just tried it here in 1.1.2 and you can search for '//' using '..//..'  I even went back to version 1.0 and the same behavior is there as well you can search for '//' using '..//..'

-Ray

Ray -

I probably wasn't clear when I said that I couldn't find use of the "/" in the user guide.  I wasn't referring to it's primary use regarding "not" ... I was referring to its use as an escape character to find the literal character following it.  

I was asking if that specific point was documented.

As for the // not working, I guess that will just remain a mystery as to why I originally could not use it.  What I had done was set up some records for import to Sesame.  Some of the "remarks" fields contained paragraph marks within the field.  In order for this not to be misinterpred as a new record, on import to Sesame, I did a search and replace of the paragraph marks with //. I thought I would then simply search for the records containing // and replace it with paragraph returns.  

I know that when I did my search it did not retrieve the records and I started over using something else.  In any case, it is clear that it does work ... and I may have had another "problem" that I didn't take into consideration.

Thanks!

Ray

Mea culpa and thank you for making the point.  Somewhere my message(s) went bonkers referring to \ and or /

In any event, page 235 is what I was looking for and I don't know why I missed it the first time.

Thanks

Quote:


You are both right. Mark meant if in a field you know there is a single period then it does not need to be escaped. You are searching for a period anywhere in that field in which case yes it needs to be escaped otherwise Sesame will see '.....' as '..' '..' '.' which is ending with a period as Sesame has no way to know that you want the middle period to be ignored unless you escape it.

Quote:


but a retrieve spec of

Mary..A..Lister..Billingsham..Wadsworth

would also retrieve

MaryAppleListerBillingshamWadsworth
Mary Joe Fred A Lister Billingsham Wadsworth
Mary Ann Clister Billingsham Fred Wadsworth
MaryAListerBillingshamWadsworth
Mary Ann Fred Joe Bob Sue Widlister Spencer Bob Billingsham Robert Sean Billy Barb Don John Lou Ginger Wadsworth

so to retrieve only the record whose field contains "Mary..A..Lister..Billingsham..Wadsworth" you would use a [

-Ray

Hi -

I'm getting close; however, I do not see the "problem" with max and min.  I am aware of the fact that I can use it to get a number of records such as max 5 or min 3 or whatever.

However, I do not see the affect that has on my searches.

If I enter Max, I retrieve all records with Max (and nothing else) in the field.  (Likewise with Min)

If I enter ..Max.. I retrieve all records that contain, anywhere in the field, the letters Max.  (Likewise with Min).

So, I am confused about when they need to be given "special" consideration in the situation I have described.

As far as I can tell the [] also works fine with single or wild card searches whether searching for either the left bracket or the right bracket or both. 

Can you give me any illustrations of where these characters won't work "properly" in a retrieve spec?

Thanks!

Aha!  Got it.  Thanks!

Did you see that I (thinking I could beat your reply - foolish me) modified the preceding note to include a comment about the brackets?

Well, I've got to put this aside for awhile and, unfortunately, I have not gotten a clear understanding of how the

[]
{
}

work.   (Grrr - and I don't understand why the forum won't let me separate the left and right brace, no matter what I try!  lol)

Other than that, the document is fairly complete, so I am going to e-mail it to you and would appreciate feedback on making it more viable for others to find it useful.

Thanks!

Quote:


Spencer,

I just talked to Mark and neither of us received the document as of yet.

-Ray

Ray -

I couldn't find an e-mail address for you, so I sent it to Mark and asked him to "share" it with you.  Just tell me the best way to send it and it's on the way.

Thanks!

Just send it to Support@Lantica.com and I'll pass it out.

-Ray

Got it, Thanks. I'll pass it onto Alec. I know he is rather busy lately so it may take him a while to read over it.

-Ray

Quote:


Spencer, when you say "does not work", you mean that it implements a search command (does some work). Every character that you have found so far in one way or another implements a search command (work). As such, to use them literally, Sesame provides a means to "escape" or literalize that search command - to tell it that, this time, you intend to find that character itself as opposed to running the command that character represents.

In almost every case these characters are hold overs from Q&A or are the very well known characters that implement regular expressions. In any case, any database that implements a search language, has a set of these characters. And, in almost every case, the backslash "\" is used to escape them.

In these posts and in the title of this thread, you seem to be implying that there is something broken. Having command characters in the search language is a necessary feature of a search language. Most of these are derived from Q&A and implemented very similarly. A handful are new additions or modifications of the Q&A character (like "~" no longer meaning "soundex"). And, I will grant that something less than five of them slipped by undocumented (There are two that I know of: "[" and "*"). But, in all, they do the commands they are intended to do.

To describe them as "non-working" is missleading. These are the characters that do all of the "work" of a search language. Without them, every search spec would have to be absolutely identical to the value in the field. No range operations could be performed. No comparison operations could be done (i.e.: "< 22"). There could be no wildcard searches. There could be no search spec programming, etc..

The pages between 221 and 255 of the User's Manual outline these command characters, and on page 235 the "escaping" of command characters is described.

Quote:

Spencer,

I just looked through the source for 1.1.3 and I found no reference that the '*' is a special search character. If a field has only a * in it then a * in the retrieve spec will find that record. '..*.." will find any record that has a * in that field.

In what case is it not working for you?

-Ray

Quote:


Do you have any suggestions as to how we might document this better? It is approximately 90% compatible with Q&A's syntax - so any Q&A documentation on search syntax pretty much applies. We can't (of course) simply copy the Q&A documentation. But does Tom's book on Q&A (for example) make this any clearer for you than do the Sesame manuals, or any of the other +/-12 books that cover Q&A/Sesame search syntax?

From "Tom's book", page 211:
=============================
Quote:
I have eliminated the text next to the four patterns noted above.  There is one sentence for each of the lines, except the ~ soundex has many examples.  The Sesame documentation provides much more detail.
-----------------------------------
Editing note: the symbols above are not too clear on my browser. Reading the four groups, top to bottom, are:
Double Periods
Forward slash, double periods
Right closing bracket
Tilde
-----------------------------
And "Tom's book" is the excellent "Q&A Bible" by Thomas J. Marcellus, editor of The Quick Answer, and now editor of the excellent Inside Sesame.
=====================================
If I am not mistaken, in Sesame, using the backslash escape character "\" is not limited to "special characters".  You can use it for any character, so if in doubt, use it.