Search using the period symbol... just one character?

[Abram K-J]

Reading the help files on the period symbol for character searches, I'm concluding that one can use it to just search a single character. Is this correct?

 

So I can effectively search, for example, the MT-LXX parallel with:

 

.+

 

but not with:

 

.--+

(I realize I can get the results of the second search above by other means.)

 

From Helen's post (granted, long ago) here, I had thought that maybe a multiple symbol search was possible. Is this not the case?

[Λύχνις Δαν]

.- <FOLLOWED BY> .- <FOLLOWED BY> .+

 

Does that help - tried .-.-.+ but that doesn't fly. I'm pretty sure I have tried such a thing earlier in another case. Anyhow the above seemed to find "--+" occurrences but I haven't check them - there seemed to be a lot.

 

Thx

D

Edited December 16, 2013 by Daniel Semler

[Abram K-J]

Ah, yes--I had actually tried that string, but then gave up because the search was taking so long (for Accordance).

 

But I think this must be because it was actually doing three separate searches and then merging the results? That's what the pop-up screens seemed to suggest, that showed up as I was waiting.

 

Why, however, when searching by "Article" in the MT-LXX tool, do I get results that are not strictly --+ ? Switching to Paragraph view (which I thought would have searched by entry/line rather than by verse) misses some results altogether, so either way, I'm either not running the search right, or it's not giving me what I'm looking for.

 

EDIT: see attached screen cap for an example when searching by "Article."

Edited December 16, 2013 by Abram K-J

[Abram K-J]

Update: Actually, what the above search string when set to "Paragraph" is giving me ("32 exact hits") is, oddly enough, every line/entry (i.e., "Paragraph," if I remember it correctly) in Tov-Polak where --+ occurs with another --+. OR... and this is the strange thing... --- shows up in these results, too. So if a line has --+ and ---, it shows as a hit. So, too, does a Paragraph with --+ and +.

 

If it has just --+, it doesn't highlight in the Paragraph view. So this search string doesn't still quite get me all the way there.

 

Does the search field matter for such a query? I was doing "Comments" above. Though "Symbols" field yields same results.

Again, I realize that the simplest way to find all instances of --+ in Tov-Polak is to set the search field to "Symbols" and then type in the number 12 (which is --+), but as I noted here, this method has a few kinks--not everywhere, but with some of the notations.

 

I'm mostly just curious about this thread, how to construct this sort of search, especially for those searches using the "Symbols" field that don't seem work fully properly in the MT-LXX tool.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Yep I see your point. Hmmm.... ok maybe the best thing is to report a correction against the MT-LXX module to get the verses thing sorted out.

 

I tried the <FOLLOWED BY> augmented with <WITHIN ? WORDS> but that's not really helpful. They aren't words after all. Couldn't get [FIELD BEGIN] to help either.

 

I've on occasion wondered if a simple regex search capability as a search option of last resort might be a nice addition to Acc for cases like this.

 

Thx

D