GRO showing zero results for EVERYTHING [SOLVED]

[Andrew Tarr]

In text fields, a space is a character.  <sp> is the usual abbreviation for a space.

And then there was the 'hard' space or 'blank' at ASCII 255  which appears as a space but the system sees as different.

[Watson]

Thanks for the IT lessons.  If a human saw space before a name, he or she would consider it not significant and would disregard it.  I don't see why the computer program shouldn't do the same, in the interests of making the system user-friendly.  To punish the user for inserting a space seems unnecessary, especially as, in this instance, he was left not knowing what had gone wrong.

[KGarrad]

The user is being punished for failing to enter data properly.

[Andrew Tarr]

If a human saw space before a name, he or she would consider it not significant and would disregard it.  I don't see why the computer program shouldn't do the same, in the interests of making the system user-friendly.

Speaking as a human, I agree with your point - and it is easy for a program to remove leading space characters.  But that would remove the ability to actually search with a leading space 

[Watson]

Why would anyone want to search the GRO records with a leading space?

[ReadyDale]

Why would anyone want to search the GRO records with a leading space?

I'm case there are any records with a leading space k