A Question for the Programmers

[Kevy Baby]

While I have a lot more free time on my hands, I am helping a friend of mine who owns a small business. I am making some updates in his FileMaker Pro (FMP) database. I am not trained as a programmer and have very little experience, mostly just stumbling my way through.

I am reverse engineering some code that someone else used to repurpose for my use. However, I am running into challenges and there is one small bit that I don't understand (though I may be overthinking it).

I have put the (non-standard) FMP language in more understandable (hopefully) terms and I put some parts in (parenthesis). The part that has me stumped is the "EXIT LOOP IF [1 = 1]":

INSERT TEXT "1" (into field "ABC")

LOOP
    IF ABC = 1
        DUPLICATE RECORD
        INSERT TEXT "" (into field "ABC")
        EXIT LOOP IF [1 = 1]
    ELSE
        GO TO NEXT PORTAL ROW
    END IF
END LOOP

(Command to copy certain text)

LOOP
    IF ABC = 1
        INSERT TEXT "" (into field "ABC")
        EXIT LOOP IF [1 = 1]
    ELSE
        GO TO NEXT PORTAL ROW
    END IF
END LOOP

Wouldn't "EXIT LOOP IF [1 = 1]" mean just to exit the loop (since 1 will always equal 1!)? If so, what is the point of a loop?

[Alex]

Not an expert as it has been a long time so I may be forgetting some idiosyncrasy but it looks that way.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Hmm. Is there no "break" statement in FMP? That would be the only thing I can think of, that someone kludged a break statement in. If finding the first instance where ABC = 1 is good enough, with no need to continue through the full loop, that would make sense.

[Kevy Baby]

No break -- it's a very old version (v. 6 and they just released v. 12).

So, any idea why a loop might have been built in?

[Ghoulish Delight]

If I follow correctly, the "Insert" line adds the value "1" to any record that matches "ABC". The loop then goes through all the records looking for a "1". If it finds a "1", then there must have been a record matching "ABC", so "ABC" is a duplicate.

Or something like that.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Looks like that's how they exited the loop, as GD said, it's used as the break statement to get out of the loop.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Actually, on another read it looks like what it's doing is trying to duplicate an existing record, rather than find a duplicate (stupid English). So it goes through the loop until it finds the record it wants to duplicate, then breaks out.

[Kevy Baby]

On rereading, I see my error in misreading. The loop exit only occurs when ABC equals 1: I was erroneously reading the string that the routine would never loop because of the "1=1" exit.

Hopefully I can figure out the bigger problem on Wednesday.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Actually, on another read it looks like what it's doing is trying to duplicate an existing record, rather than find a duplicate (stupid English). So it goes through the loop until it finds the record it wants to duplicate, then breaks out.

Yes, the routine is to duplicate a record. Unfortunately, when I try to replicate (repurpose) the code, it wasn't working. Hopefully when I look at this with a fresh mind, the problem will become apparent.