NthItem ( text ; delimiter ; itemnumber )

Returns the text item specified from a list of items seperated by specified delimiter

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Drew Boone - Show more from this author
Doulos Ministries, Inc.
http://douloscorp.com

Sample input:

NthItem ("red,white,green,blue";
",";
3)

Sample output:

green

Function definition: (Copy & paste into FileMaker's Edit Custom Function window)

Let(
[/*VARIABLES*/

start = 
Case (
itemnumber=1;1;
Position ( text ; delimiter ; 1 ; itemnumber-1 ) + Length(delimiter)
);

NumberOfDelimiters = (Length (Filter (text;delimiter))) / Length(delimiter);

LengthOfItem= 
Case(

/*if the number of delimiters in the text is equal to the itemnumber minus 1
i.e. if itemnumber is the last item in the list*/
NumberOfDelimiters  =  (itemnumber-1); 
(Length ( text ) - start) + 1;

Position (text; delimiter; 1; itemnumber) - start
)


];/*CALCULATION*/

Middle ( text ; start ; LengthOfItem )

)

I found this function quite useful when working in REALBasic, so I engineered this solution for FMP. Basically, it will select the specified item in a list. One of its best features is that the user can specify the delimiter for the items in the list. For example. If I only want the 3 byte of an IP address I can specify "." as the delimiter.

Comments

		oliver Apr 5, 2015
For NumberOfDelimiters I would use PatternCount rather than your expression. If one is using a multiple character delimiter e.g."\|\|" it might because a single "\|" could occur in text -- in which case your expression would return say 3.5 instead of 3 if text was: "ab\|cd\|\|de\|\|ef\|\|gh"

Note: these functions are not guaranteed or supported by BrianDunning.com. Please contact the individual developer with any questions or problems.

NthItem ( text ; delimiter ; itemnumber )

Comments

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