Which version of FMP are you using?
Sounds pretty straight forward. My initial thoughts are below.
On Dec 29, 2007, at 8:38 AM, Andrew Kappy wrote:
1. I need to generate 750,000 alpha-numerics, 6 characters long,
excluding certain letters. I have no problem generating as many
random numbers as I want, using the RANDOM function, but getting
down to 6 alpha-numerics without duplicates is the problem. I've
generated 1.5 million random numbers and translated them to
integers. I've also built a numbered table of included alpha
characters. I've tried various calculations to grab 4 numbers from
the larger random number and combine them with two of the letters
via calculations. The result is way too many duplicates.
I'd make a custom function combining the use of the RND function and
the choose function to accomplish this. Build your random string one
character at a time. Probably create a global field to insert each
newly created random string with a relationship back to your string
field. If there is a match throw away the global and get another
random string. If there is not a match then create a new record and
put the global in. Repeat until you hit your 750,000 count.
Depending on your OS and hardware this process might take a while to
accomplish.
2. I need to generate over 10,000 records of 24 fields, with the
numbers 1-24 (or letters A-X) randomly distributed through each
record, with no repeats within a record and no distribution repeated
within the 10,000 records.
Create a calculation field that is the concatanation of your 24 fields
then each time you create a new random field entry check to see if it
already exists in your calculation field. Check for duplicates of the
calculated field and if there are rebuild your 24 fields until you hit
10,000 unique records.
HTH,
Jens
Jens Selvig
...Lost in Montana...
