Restrictions to attribute names in formulas

We previously had a thread that talked about “$” cannot be used as an attribute name in formula calculations. Basically such attributes won’t show up as an option as variables.

Now I just discovered some non-English characters are not supported either.
There are always workaround, but in my case it requires restructuring the data so non English speaker don’t get confused.

Two suggestions:

  1. Make such limitation very clear in both documentation and in the formula popup prompt.
  2. Add support for non English characters, otherwise all Infinity attributes (shown as table titles) must remain in English you are basically limiting yourself to English only users.
  3. You should make the plans ASAP in your data structure so it won’t later become a huge job after it’s deeply integrated with other features.

Hello @j11, would you be able to give me an example of the non-English attribute name that you used so that I can test it myself as well as give more details to the dev team? So they can discuss and see how this problem can be solved - i.e. whether it’s possible to remove those limitations.

Just to let you know: Special german language characters seem to work fine: ä ü ö ß

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Good to know @micck!

Some Chinese for your reference.
年 (year)
月 (month)
日 (day)
次 (count)
量 (quantity)

I’ve found that prepending an alphabet character solves the problem.

Could I get some kind of assurance that double byte characters will be officially supported by Infinity?
If not, is the choice of implementation ready for adding the support in the near future?

With if-this-then-that automation being the next top item on the roadmap, I have a feeling it will again refuse to process my data.

Thanks for sending examples @j11. We currently do have issues with the system ‘not recognizing’ some characters in certain situations (for example in comment notifications) and we’re aware of that and are planning to fix it.

However, this might be a different issue, so I will need to check with the dev team whether it is a different issue and whether it can be fixed together with that issue.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you assurance with absolute certainty. I will do my best to explain the issue to the dev team and see what they can tell me about this.

Hi @j11! I’m happy to inform you that we have just fixed the issue with special characters (and non-English characters) used as attribute names in formulas. You should be able to locate your ‘$’ column now when creating a formula and use it in the syntax. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

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