Searching a field for a specific Character

[rene316]

Hello,
I have a file with a first name field. The client would like us to make the first name field possesive, ie... John would be John's and James would be James'. Is there a quick line command or something that can do this. I figured if we search the first name field backwards until we encounter a character and check to see if it is an 's' or not, we could then make the name's possesive without messing the first name up, ie...James's. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Rene

 

[DSummZZZ]

You can use something like:

SCAN 
   IF UPPER(RIGHT(ALLTRIM(firstname), 1)) = "S"
      REPLACE firstname WITH ALLTRIM(firstname) + "'"
   ELSE
      REPLACE firstname WITH ALLTRIM(firstname) + "'s"
   ENDIF
ENDSCAN 

-or-

REPLACE ALL firstname WITH ;
   IIF(UPPER(RIGHT(ALLTRIM(firstname), 1)) = "S", ALLTRIM(firstname) + "'", ALLTRIM(firstname) + "'s")

Use 'ALL' after you have tested it on a few records to be sure of your results though.


-Dave S.-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[rene316]

Thanks Dave. I will give it a shot.

 

[baltman]

You may want to add logic so that it only runs once per record...

e.g.

str1="abc's"
str2="abcs"

? CHR(39) $ str1
? CHR(39) $ str2

thus

replace all fieldname with [logic] and CHR(39) $ fieldname=.f.

Brian