And I quote

Sometimes it is the little things that get you and frustrate you. A few weeks ago, I had a colleague contact me. She was frustrated because she was trying to get a calc script to work and kept getting an annoying error. Below is the text of what she was trying to do.  (I copied it from the email)

Fix(“IT Costs”)

OFS_Calculated = Headcount->”Driver Input”->BegBalace * “IT Costs”->”Driver Rate”>BegBalance;

EndFix

I’m using the following code to identify the Account member that the Smart List ID represents:

@MEMBER(@CONCATENATE(“HSP_ID_”, @Name(@hspnumtostring("BegBalance"->"Driver Type"))))

When I run the rule, I get the “attempt to cross a null member in function [@X]” error. When I hardcode the smart list value for the driver account I want, the rule runs successfully:

I suggested we do an on-line meeting to figure it out. We tried a few things and it looked like the syntax was correct. Then the light went on.  I asked why she was using intelligent quotes.  Intelligent quotes are the ones that bend inward or outward ” instead of straight up and down ". She told me she had cut and pasted it from a blog she found the syntax on. Yea that's a problem. Essbase does not consider intelligent quotes to be quotes. They have a different ascii value.  I had her change the quotes to straight up and down and the code worked perfectly.   What was s simple issue took a long time to figure out.

 

The morals of the story,

1. Look for the simple issues before you make it harder than it is

2. Remember when you cut and paste, things can be weird. If you have an issue, retype the example yourself in the editor so you know that there are not weird special characters.

 

I've seen similar issues with pasting data values or member names from excel, and word. So look at that first.