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disfunctional calculated field

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    disfunctional calculated field

    I need to print the name of a department director at the top of a payroll report. This name is to be retrieved from a personnel table. Only one employee is associated with the position "director" and will always be listed in this table.

    I created a calculated field on the report called "director":
    if(Personnel->Position="director",Personnel->Employee,"")
    which I inserted where I want the name, but nothing prints. Can anyone see what's wrong with this expression?

    My report is based on a payroll set, where personnel is one child. It is grouped by employee. I tried inserting the field in the report header, group header, group footer, report footer. Nothing.

    #2
    RE: disfunctional calculated field

    if(Personnel->Position="director",Personnel->Employee,"")
    If your personnel table, position field is eight characters long, this should work. If the field is longer to allow for longer "positions", then the field for position for the director actually contains "director " with as many blank spaces at the end as the field length exceeds 8, and "director" is not equal to "director ".

    Try rtrim(personnel->position)="director"
    There can be only one.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: disfunctional calculated field

      Becky,

      >>This name is to be retrieved from a personnel table.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: disfunctional calculated field

        Hi Becky,
        Another comment on this, if (for character values)you are using the if() function rather than the if() xbasic command, the length of the return value is determined by the length on the false argument. So if(1=1,"True","") will return nothing as the false argument has no length.

        Could it be that this is your issue?
        Jim

        Comment


          #5
          RE: disfunctional calculated field

          Probably - I'm not sure what it should be???

          Comment


            #6
            RE: disfunctional calculated field

            Stan -
            I was using the alltrim function, which didn't make any difference. I tried your rtrim suggestion and still didn't get anything.

            Comment


              #7
              RE: disfunctional calculated field

              Hi Becky,

              if(1=1,"True"," ")

              The false argument in this case is 4 characters in length (even though they are blank spaces). This will allow "True" to show. If there were only 3 blank spaces in the false argument as in:

              if(1=1,"True"," ") then a true evaluation would output:
              "Tru"

              The false argument controls the length of the output.

              Jim

              Comment


                #8
                RE: disfunctional calculated field

                Becky,

                I think what Jim is trying to suggest is that you use:

                if(Personnel->Position="director",Personnel->Employee,"__________")

                where the underscores between the last quotes represent a number of blank spaces equal to the widest name you allow, i.e. your Employee field width.
                There can be only one.

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: disfunctional calculated field

                  I see what you're saying. I was not aware of that - thanks for pointing it out. I've experimented with different false values. My problem is that the IF statement evaluates to false every time.

                  I need this in the Report Header, so the data hasn't been sorted or grouped when I'm trying to retrieve this one record out. Should I use another function or some modification of the IF to do so? I'm sure there's a simple solution.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: disfunctional calculated field

                    It now works fine under the group footer (under the director's data), so this kind of confirms my thoughts above. I guess I can get around it by adding another field for "director's name", but I'd like to know if there is another solution for future use. Thanks!

                    Comment

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