Replacing individual characters in a field to something else.

[vander via AccessMonster.com]

I have a field with names that is pulled from a main frame database. These
names have the last name first, then a comma, then the first name. I want to
get rid of the commas. I can do this easily enough with the edit replace.
But this table will be constantly updated from the main frame Db. I want to
build it as part of an automatic process when running the update. I though
of using an update query, using a wildcard to find the commas, but cannot
figure out how to update just the character. It wants to update the untire
contents of the field.

any thoughs?

 

[John W. Vinson]

I have a field with names that is pulled from a main frame database. These
names have the last name first, then a comma, then the first name. I want to
get rid of the commas. I can do this easily enough with the edit replace.
But this table will be constantly updated from the main frame Db. I want to
build it as part of an automatic process when running the update. I though
of using an update query, using a wildcard to find the commas, but cannot
figure out how to update just the character. It wants to update the untire
contents of the field.

any thoughs?

How are you doing the "pulling" - with an update query, an append query, or
what? In either of these you can use a calculated field such as

Replace([fullname], ",", "")

and update the target table to this string; it will replace "Vinson, John"
with "Vinson John".

However, I'd really recommend having separate FirstName and LastName fields
and migrating your data into these fields. If you could describe the update
process and how you'll be using the local table we'd be able to help.