Is there a "find and replace text" function in Base?

[BJM1]

I’m writing a database that uses a query to put a list of names in alphabetical order, and I’ve encountered a problem. The Base program’s sort function doesn’t recognize spaces between words. When alphabetizing by surname, “Smith John” should come before “Smithfield Jane”, but instead those names appear in the opposite (i.e. wrong) order.

This raises two related questions. First, is there any way to get Base to recognize spaces between words instead of ignoring them? And second, if not, is there a way to replace all spaces in the name field with a non-alphabetic character, such as a comma or number, without having to rewrite thousands of records one at a time?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Ratslinger]

Hello,
Please see:

find & replace tool in LibreOffice Base

Is there replace option in Base? Simply I need some repeating text (letter) in the field (column) to replace with another, so how to do that? Thank you.

and

Why won't FIND work in Base forms

I’m trying to set up a database in Base, and I can’t make FIND (or FIND AND REPLACE) work in a Form. If I have to go to a Table to do a search, I may as well be using Calc.

[Wanderer]

@BJM1

First, is there any way to get Base to recognize spaces between words instead of ignoring them? And second, if not, is there a way to replace all spaces in the name field with a non-alphabetic character, such as a comma or number, without having to rewrite thousands of records one at a time?

As you are using a query I assume you sort in the query with a clause like

SELECT Name FROM Table ORDER BY Name;

So actually the used database is doing the sort, not Base.
You may replace Chars on the fly by modifying your sql:

ORDER BY REPLACE(Name, ' ', '_')

to change sorting.

For the second part you can use sql also:

UPDATE Table SET Name = REPLACE(Name, ' ', '_')

but as this is no query you would have to do this at the SQL-console, also included in Base. (And make Backups before you are attempting things like this. A query will not alter your data, a command can easily destroy/loose all your data!!)