accessories count question

["Edward Mack" <emack@mackcom.com>]

Hi all,
I have searched the archives for a solution to this and have not had any
luck, so thank you in advance to anyone who can help.

I have a catalog that contains many items that are available in different
colors.  In the products db I have a field called color that contains the
different options for the item.  For example:
dark red, light blue, yellow
I have this working using the [item-accessories color] to create a select
list for the customer to choose their color.

The problem... some of the items only have one color, consequently when
these items are displayed MV shows a select list with only one item.  I want
to do something that will use [item-accessories color show] to display the
color for the items that are only available in one color, and use
[item-accessories color] to make the select list for items with two or more
colors.

The problem is I can't figure out how to get a count of how many accessories
I have for the item.   I've tried suggestions of using [loop arg="item-field
color"] to determine how many colors, but since loop iterates for each space
and comma, items that have [tab]dark blue[tab] give me a result of 2 instead
of one.  Is there a way to have [loop] only iterate when it sees a comma?
Or... is there a different way to accomplish this?
Thank you,
Ed

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