Silly beginners search query

[Leopold Green]

I wanted to use the Research pane to find every reference to the Pharaoh Akhenaten as I have always been interested in his relationship to Moses and wondered about the overthrow of his reign and the exodus as part of the same development of monotheism - I know this isn't a historically accepted concept [and only Freud seemed to believe it]...

 

So I thought I would use the Research pane to search for each and every occurrence of his name, thus:

 

Akhenaten <OR> Echnaton <OR> Akhenaton <OR> Ikhnaton <OR> Khuenaten <OR> Amenhotep IV

 

but running this search brings up no results - I know this is wrong because the Anchor Yale does have an article of Akhenaten... sure enough if I search for just Akhenaten I get multiple hits...

 

So what am I doing wrong? OR is surely the right linking command for the result I want

 

I know this must be something so straightforward I beg your forbearance

 

Leopold

[mbcvida]

I am not certain why, but if you remove the IV from Amenhotep IV, the search runs normally.

[Leopold Green]

Thanks Dick

 

It seems to work if I put Amenhotep IV in brackets (Amenhotep IV) so you must be something to do with the 'IV'. I'd like to know what though for future reference

[Helen Brown]

It's concerning "precedence." Amenhotep IV is a phrase and the way you had it formulated all your terms are alternatives to Amenhotep and all require the IV as part of the phrase. Either put brackets around all the s or around the phrase so that Accordance knows how to evaluate the entire search term.

[Joel Brown]

To put it another way, in the phrase 'God King David', are you searching for God David King David, or 'God' by itself? The query is ambiguous, so the brackets are needed to tell Accordance which one it is.

[Leopold Green]

Thanks Helen and Joe!

 

It makes sense now... this forum is such a marvellous resource

[rpavich]

It's concerning "precedence." Amenhotep IV is a phrase and the way you had it formulated all your terms are alternatives to Amenhotep and all require the IV as part of the phrase. Either put brackets around all the <OR>s or around the phrase so that Accordance knows how to evaluate the entire search term.

Brackets?

 

Can you type out what you are talking about? I can't quite get it.

Edited March 5, 2015 by rpavich

[Leopold Green]

Hi I took it to mean I should have written it thus:

Akhenaten <OR> Echnaton <OR> Akhenaton <OR> Ikhnaton <OR> Khuenaten <OR> (Amenhotep IV)

 which works fine

or even like this

(Akhenaten) <OR> (Echnaton) <OR> (Akhenaton) <OR> (Ikhnaton) <OR> (Khuenaten) <OR> (Amenhotep IV)

though I am not sure what extra that would do... I really rather regret never having been anywhere near a class on database query languages!

[Λύχνις Δαν]

It's concerning "precedence." Amenhotep IV is a phrase and the way you had it formulated all your terms are alternatives to Amenhotep and all require the IV as part of the phrase. Either put brackets around all the <OR>s or around the phrase so that Accordance knows how to evaluate the entire search term.

 

This is what I thought initially but only one case works, that of bracketing Akhenaton IV. Bracketing all the <OR> terms like this :

 

(Akhenaten <OR> Echnaton <OR> Akhenaton <OR> Ikhnaton <OR> Khuenaten) <OR> Amenhotep IV

 

fails. As does :

 

(Akhenaten <OR> Echnaton <OR> Akhenaton <OR> Ikhnaton <OR> Khuenaten <OR> Amenhotep) IV

 

But to shorten the query for illustrative purposes this works:

 

(Khuenaten IV) <OR> (Amenhotep IV)

 

Now this is hard to explain in a consistent way. Because the above should be the same (as far as I can see) as this :

 

(Khuenaten <OR> Amenhotep) IV

 

but in fact this form fails.

 

Now the above is the same as :

 

(Khuenaten <OR> Amenhotep) <AND> IV

 

And indeed it fails.

 

It appears that the <AND>, explicit or implicit, when unbracketed is triggering the code that checks whether a particular search term exists and if it does not then the warning dialog is thrown. This is rather confusing as to take one example from above : (Khuenaten <OR> Amenhotep) <AND> IV and breaking it up : Khuenaten <OR> Amenhotep succeeds as IV succeeds. And in fact Amenhotep IV succeeds. Only Khuenaten IV fails showing the dialog. That last case seems ok but the others don't to me. Is this a bug ?

 

My tests were done on 11.0.4 on Mac Mavericks.

 

Thx

D

[Ken Simpson]

Try this one (Akhenaten,Echnaton,Akhenaton,Ikhnaton,Khuenaten,Amenhotep) IV

 

The , acts as <or> within brackets. I don’t think <or> does, and Joel will explain why. But the above search works perfectly for me.

 

 

I think you will find that any of Daniel’s searches will be legal if a , replaces an <or>. Ity may not find results, but the search will be legal.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Ken Simpson

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Interesting. Isn't a comma basically an <OR>

The above does not work for me. I do not have Bibliotheca Sacra.

 

This raises the other issue here which is that the library modules you have may affect the outcome.

And this makes me wonder if you tried the <OR> queries do they work ?

 

thx

D

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Actually curiously :

 

(Amenhotep IV) fails to find anything while :

 

Amenhotep IV succeeds and finds results.

 

In this case the ( ) should be unnecessary and have no effect shouldn't they ?

 

thx

D

[mbcvida]

I tried this - worked fine 

*nat?n <OR> amenhotep IV

[Ken Simpson]

Daniel, the <or> queries do work. I didn’t try - I just made an ass - u-me and got it wrong.

 

I don’t get why the (Amenhotep IV) doesn’t work either.

 

Sorry

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Thanx Ken, figured they might in your case. Not sure why.

 

thx

D