SID-01998: Using CALC inside a SEARCH

Status:	Answered	TWiki version:	4.2.1	Perl version:	5.8.8
Category:	CategorySearch	Server OS:	Linux	Last update:	10 years ago

My objective is to use %CALC to get the value of the previous cell in a table (see below) and use it to search for a topic and display its form values.

Column 1 (Sx0123) is a topic with a Form containing LastName and FirstName fields.

What am I missing? Thanks.

-- Bob Mellinger - 2014-12-04

Discussion and Answer

The problem is that %CALC is not evaluated inside-out & left-to-right like other variables. The %CALCULATE has the proper evaluation order, but it does not support references to table cells. This is documented in SpreadSheetPlugin.

In your case you need to delay the %SEARCH so that it evaluates after %CALC. Untested:

%CALC{$NOP(%)SEARCH{ "$T(R$ROW():C$COLUMN(-1))" scope="topic" nosearch="on" nototal="on" expandvariables="on" format="$formfield(LastName), $formfield(FirstName)" }$NOP(%)}%

In your case it might be faster to use %FORMFIELD instead of %SEARCH. Untested:

%CALC{$SET(topic, $T(R$ROW():C$COLUMN(-1)))$NOP(%)FORMFIELD{ "LastName" topic="$GET(topic)" }$NOP(%), $NOP(%)FORMFIELD{ "FirstName" topic="$GET(topic)" }$NOP(%)}%

Consider hiding the formula in a FIRSTLASTNAME preferences setting so that you can simply write:

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-12-05

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-- Peter Thoeny - 2015-12-03

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