Worksheets - Using wildcards to display only devices on a range of Layers (L=)

[elc]

Hello,

I am trying to adjust the report criteria so that only objects on specific layers show up in the worksheet.
Is it not possible to use wildcards?

 

Thanks for any hints.
 

Edited November 29, 2023 by elc

[michaelk]

It is possible.   
 

But I’ve never tried using only wildcards.   
 

Since you don’t care what the device name is, can you remove it from the criteria?  Does that make it work?

 

Or use just one asterisk for the device name wildcard 

[elc]

Hi @michaelk,
thanks for looking into this.
I am using wildcards quite a lot and they work everywhere (or at least everywhere I needed them so far 😅) except for the Layers.

 

Lets say you have layers: 1001, 1002, 1003, 2001, 2002, 3004...

but only want to select all devices ('Device'.'name'='*') on layers starting with 1 (L='1*') that does not work for me. The resulting list is empty.

[michaelk]

I'm seeing the same thing.  

 

I could have sworn that wildcards on layer names used to work.

 

I wonder if there is a way to use the Left function or a Substring function in the database formula to do what you want.

 

@PatStanford?

[Pat Stanford]

Threads in 2015 and 2016 talk about Layers not being able to use wildcards.

 

Thread in 2022 talks about Layers not being able to use wildcards in Vectorscript.

 

My personal guess as to why is that the Layers are kept in a separate "Name List" from Classes and other objects and wildcards have never be implemented for that list.

[elc]

3 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

My personal guess as to why is that the Layers are kept in a separate "Name List" from Classes and other objects and wildcards have never be implemented for that list.

Thanks for the info @Pat Stanford, that's a shame, as it is inconsistent? but...
 

 

18 hours ago, michaelk said:

I wonder if there is a way to use the Left function or a Substring function in the database formula to do what you want.

...thanks a lot for the suggestion @michaelk!
another "why didn't I think of that?! but luckily there is always some very smart person on the forum that knows exactly what to do"-moment. 😅
with the above example

... & (Left(Layer;4)='1*') & ...

worked like a charm.

 

[michaelk]

Nice. I tried it and got the syntax wrong. Well done!