What happened to "Regular Expression Searches"?

[Jim Wert]

In BW8 help,
chapter 24 "The Command Line - Introduction",
section titled "More Complex Word and Phrase Searches",
subsection "Doing Regular Expression Searches"
is the following information:
"BibleWorks does, however, have the ability to do verse-based regular expression searches, for those hardy souls that want or need to use it. It is at present implemented only for English text. To do a regular expression search, you enter the search criteria preceded by a tilde ‘~’. ... A table of supported regular expression operators is located in Regular Expression Syntax Summary."

I tried this out in BW8, and consistently got messages like this:
"Could not find the verse reference "~god" in the current search version."

When I tried it in BW7 it worked fine. I don't recall seeing anywhere that this functionality was disabled for BW8. It strikes me as quite powerful.

Anyone have any insight on this?

Thanks,
Jim

[Yaku Lee]

With NAU as the search version in my BW8, entering <~god> on the CL resulted in 354 verses found. Whatever suffix is attached to the word “god” is included in the verses found: “goddess” (1Ki 11:5), “godless” (Job 8:13), “godliness” (Dan 11:32), “godlessness” (1Ti 2:2), “godly” (Deu 33:8), and “gods” ( Gen 31:30). Of course “God’s” is not included in the verses found because the search is case sensitive.

Trying the tilde search with other English version as the search version, there was no problem at all with my BW8.

But if you type <.~god> with a period at the beginning on the CL, BW8 responds with the following error message:
“The following word or form cannot be found in the current search version: ~god.”

Regards.

[bobvenem]

My attempts with just a tilde at the start always give me the error message that I must begin command line searches with a period. Is there a setting in Options that needs to be set to do regular searches?

[Yaku Lee]

As far as I know, the command line can start with any one of the control characters <.>, </>, <’>, <;>, <~>, etc. and there is no special setting required to start with any of them. And I have tried <~> for the first time thanks to you.

If your system requires to start the CL with a <.>, then I hope someone else can chip in to clear the situation.

Regards.

[Jim Wert]

This morning, seeing Yaku's response, I tried <~god> with no success (same error message). I did not try it without the <>. BW version was (I'm pretty sure) 8.0.018i.
I then applied the latest executable update (8.0.018m), and it worked! (without the <>).
My computer/BW8 will not accept <>.

But the statistics are very confused.
Search Version: NRS
Command line: ~god
Main Window Status Bar: "19 verses, 1 form, 21 hits 0.03 secs."
Stats Tab of Analysis Window (set for #hits in book): "NRS: 24892 matches in 379 of 37791 verses (1.00%)."
In the bar chart (I can't get screen print into this forum), showing a few examples:
Gen 8 (which is correct)
Jer 1601 (which is not correct)
4Es 1636 (more like 19 or 20)
4Ma has 3 hits, but is not in bar chart.

I tried to back out to an earlier checkpoint to get my old executable back, but it kept giving me the new executable, so I can't reconstruct what was happening.

Technical info:
from "About BibleWorks"
BW Version 8.0.018m.1 (Standard Edition)
Account type: Administrator

Prior version (when ~ and <~...> did not work): 8.0.018i
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium Version 6.1 (Build 7600)

Note: in BW7, the same query gives much more plausible statistics, although the status bar count, and the Detailed Stats window disagree on the number of verses found (504 to 503)

--Jim

[Lee]

Jim, Yaku can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe his use of <> corresponds to your use of ' ' and " ". He meant to type only the following:

~god

I have never seen this feature, so I thank you for bringing it to my attention. I tried it on the latest installation of BibleWorks 8, and it worked beautifully.

[ISalzman]

FWIW, I've tried every permutation of Command Line syntax to try and perform this search (with <>, without <>), and I am completely unable to perform this search. I'm running BW 8.0.0.018M.1 - i.e., the latest version - on Windows XP.

[bobvenem]

I am running the latest BW8 as well, and cannot in any configuration get this to work.

[Yaku Lee]

Jim, Yaku can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe his use of <> corresponds to your use of ' ' and " ". He meant to type only the following:

~god

I have never seen this feature, so I thank you for bringing it to my attention. I tried it on the latest installation of BibleWorks 8, and it worked beautifully.

I apologize for the confusion caused by my use of angle brackets to both of you. But I was simply following the BW convention of their use. Just a few lines down the chapter heading of “24 The Command Line—Introduction,” from the third sentence under “Wild Card Searches and Range Operators,” examples like “<.faith*>” for CL input start appearing. I could have said “without the angle brackets” for clarity, though.

I also find the stats very confusing for NRS <~god> search. I am even flabbergasted to find NEGATIVE search results as in the following:




Moreover the stats are not consistent with every trial of <~god> search. And I cannot duplicate the negative search results.

However, I have never experienced any inconsistency or confusion with stats of searches like <.god*>. If you want to be case sensitive, you can try a GSE like the following:





The last two searches have an additional usefulness. The expression found can be marked with some background color of your choice for ease of identification.

Regards.

[Yaku Lee]

I am running the same BW8 as you do, and I am running it on XP. My CL input is as shown below, where the search version is indicated as NRS in three locations, and in two places it is marked that no search limit is applied: “Limits” in gray and one of the 5 green squares below the CL.

And part of the search result is as shown below:

Some observations to make: stats on the bottom line and the upper line on the analysis window, connected with straight red lines, do not match. Search window shows only 7 Gen references while the analysis window says 8 hits for Gen. And hits for Jer (38) and 4Es (21) drastically contrast with what Jim reported.

In short, the stats are completely unreliable.

Regards.