...contains an operand when an operator was expected

Why doesn’t this work? It looks similar to the bottom image, which is from the PanX training videos…
lookupall(“SlipPayments”,MatchName,“Alicia Watkins”,CheckNum,Date,CheckAmt,cr()," - ")

From the PanX video:

Your formula looks correct, at least what is visible there. I think there must be something additional invisible at the end of the formula. This formula works:

lookupall("Checkbook",PayTo,"Staples",Check,Date,Debit,Category,cr()," - ")

but this formula gets the same error message you are seeing.

lookupall("Checkbook",PayTo,"Staples",Check,Date,Debit,Category,cr()," - ") aaaaaaaaa

If the window is not wide enough, the aaaaaaaaaa will disappear. I’ll bet if you make the window wider you’ll see there is something extra there. If there isn’t anything extra there, I am stumped.

Thanks, Jim. I had closed the Formula Workshop window, so I don’t know if extra junk was there, but when I retyped it this morning, it works!
Happy New Year and thanks for Panorama X.
Craig McPherson

Where do I find the Formula Workshop? Looks very useful.

It’s the final item in the Help menu. Check the entry in the Help Wizard for info on how to use it.

Hmm, I was hoping there was more to it. I miss the function help in Pan 6, particularly for lookup(, which takes an interesting variety of arguments and formats and it is so much more productive to answer the questions in that wizard than to experiment with something I don’t use often enough to remember all the salient details. Is there something like this in X?

The Formula Workshop in Pan X is nearly identical to the Formula Wizard in Pan 6.

I like the contextual Programming Assistant in Panorama 6 very much, too. It helps to overcome the problem that you cannot copy code examples from the Panorama 6 Help.

This is a great advantage in Panorama X: You can copy code snippets directly out of the Panorama X Help, be it the correct syntax of a statement / function or some code examples. So we don’t have a Programming Assistant in Panorama X at the moment, but we can get the most we need out of the Help files (and test code in the Formula Workshop).

I find the new superlookup( function much more intuitive than the original lookups. Not only that, but it is much more powerful as well allowing for several options to be included.

Funny, just saw Formula Workshop in 6, never had seen it before. I’m talking about a pull down menu that listed functions and when you clicked one it led you through its setup, prompting for values in the arguments. It was always hard to find, and I can’t find it now. But that’s what I wish I could see in X. I will explore Kurt’s and Gary’s suggestions.

I think you are thinking of being in a procedure window, right-clicking to get a pop-up menu, choosing Topics, then clicking Lookup, then Lookup( to get a dialog that walks you through creating the lookup.

Not sure which Pan version you’re referring to, when I do it in 6 I get a list of field names of every database I have open, in X it’s a bigger set of choices, but none of them are “Topics” or anything similar. But “get a dialog that walks you through creating the lookup” is what I’m after.

If you right-click inside a procedure window you will popup a list that includes “Topics” and if you select this it will popup another list with categories containing “Lookup”. Selecting this will popup another list containing all the lookup functions and selecting one of these will then open the Lookup Assistant wizard as shown below.

I assume I am looking at you doing this in Pan 6. When I did this earlier, as described, I only got a long list of fields of all my open databases, Now when I do it in 6, I see exactly what you show - cool! Pan is exciting the way it does things differently depending on … something. However, I am most interested in having this same ability in X, and so far right clicking in a procedure window gets me something similar, in terms of the Insert lines, but no Topics.

I agree - the option to look up statements and functions under topic headings was very helpful in Panorama 6. I have no doubt it will come in Panorama X.

And, as a bonus, you will see that a right-click in a Panorama X procedure and choosing Help will reveal the Formula Workshop link.

I thought it was pretty useful in Panorama 3, but in my opinion by the time Panorama 6 rolled around it was pretty useless. The menus only had a fraction of the available statements and functions, but still there were so many in the menus that it was very unwieldy since there was no search. I think the Panorama X system, with full help available at any time (because code and formulas are never entered in modal dialogs), is far superior. So I don’t expect to ever implement the Topics pop-up menu like Panorama 6 had.

The lookup( dialog was nice, perhaps this can be incorporated into the Help wizard. But if it is, I think it should go way beyond just that one function. There are many statements and functions that could use a nice dialog like that for assisting with writing code. So in my mind this is a big project, but one that is “nice to have later”, after things like Panorama X Server is done.

Lest you think I’m a total curmudgeon, I have what I think will be a nice surprise along these lines very soon. Stay tuned.

This was the most logical thread to ask my question…

I’m playing with the Formula Workshop for the first time. I’ve not bothered to use it previously. But in trying to use it, I’m wanting to Right Click and select from a list of functions, etc. Or perhaps an autocomplete! Is there no assist when using this seemingly valuable tool? I’m writing this because I see in Feb '17 there was supposed to be something new coming soon and I’m wondering what that was.

I think I was referring to the Relational Workshop.

Autocomplete would be wonderful, not just in the Formula Workshop but anywhere code and formulas are edited. It’s also a feature that is super, super hard to implement, especially since Panorama’s languages weren’t designed for that. I love the autocomplete in Xcode which I use every day, and at some future time when I have a few months to spare, that is definitely a feature I would like to investigate implementing. I personally would use it every day.

As for right clicking for a list of functions, at this point that list would be way, way, way, way too long for a menu - there are over 1,000 functions! Fortunately I believe there is no need for this, since the Help window is always available, and you can copy text directly out of it. In Panorama 6 there were many places where Help wasn’t available because of modal dialogs, so many of these dialogs essentially had a “mini-help” menu that just consisted of a list of functions. Panorama X has no modal dialogs, so no need for a mini-help menu, just use the regular full help.