What are you trying to do with the numbers when you have them? Display them in the report footer? Highlight them in the details section?

You should be able to check the length of the field and return the value if it does not equal 8:

if len({table.field})<>8
     then  (whatever you want it to do)

If you're looking for the report to keep track of them and store it in a variable then you will have to create a string variable to store the numbers in. So something like:

whileprintingrecords;

global stringvar sIncorrectLength:=sIncorrectLength & (if len({table.field})<>8
     then {table.field} & ','
          else '';
sIncorrectLength;

For the above, you will have to create an Initialize formula that will reset the variable if you wish to display the strings depending on groups and you will need a Display formula that is independent from the Calculation formula so it displays it properly.

Hope that points you in the right direction.

Ideally, I would run through each character and check whether they're alpha or digit using regular expressions, but crystal doesn't support them.

The other method (which IMO is horrible) is to declare a global array of characters and check whether each character is in the array or not.

To make things a little better you I would assume

1: you will only have digits and letters
2: there will be NO symbols if they are not allowed

And then declare an array containing all 10 digits.
You will then loop through each character in the field and check whether they match the criteria or not.

Filter out all records where the length is not 8, and then run a formula that will check the actual characters afterwards.

But it sounds extremely slow.

Edited by Keikoku - 15 Apr 2011 at 8:06am

Oh, so there is such a function. Guess it's not too bad then.