Jens,
Thanks for this. I hope that Montana is as beautiful as I imagine.
I am using FM9 ProAdv. I've got a slave machine to tie up on this, so
time is not an issue.
I may be too much of a calculation neophyte to really make use of
this, but it is leading me on to other ideas.
1. I've never done custom functions, and I'm not a programmer, so I
may be trying to delve deeper than my abilities on this. I'm unclear
how to combine the Random and Choose functions to get appropriate
results, and I don't see how to get a random mix of alpha characters
into the result.
2. Totally confused by this one. Still working on it.
Andy
On Dec 29, 2007, at 11:10 AM, Jens Selvig wrote:
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...
