Command Line Search Question

[ISalzman]

Inspired by a seminary Greek professor who said that the evangelists overwhelmingly favored the aorist over the imperfect as their narrative tense of choice. I decided to test that on the Gospel of Mark, since that is the book we are studying. I found that there were almost twice as many aorists as imperfects in the Indicative Mood. Now there's the rub. In my experience, the Command Line will only let you search one mood (indicative, etc.) at a time. So, for instance, if I wanted to search the amount of aorist verbal forms in Mark (regardless of mood), the Command Line seemingly won't allow me to do that at one time. It appears to me that the Command Line won't let you search across all moods. Is this correct? Grateful for any feedback.

[MBushell]

Inspired by a seminary Greek professor who said that the evangelists overwhelmingly favored the aorist over the imperfect as their narrative tense of choice. I decided to test that on the Gospel of Mark, since that is the book we are studying. I found that there were almost twice as many aorists as imperfects in the Indicative Mood. Now there's the rub. In my experience, the Command Line will only let you search one mood (indicative, etc.) at a time. So, for instance, if I wanted to search the amount of aorist verbal forms in Mark (regardless of mood), the Command Line seemingly won't allow me to do that at one time. It appears to me that the Command Line won't let you search across all moods. Is this correct? Grateful for any feedback.

The problem is that the codes following all the mood identifiers don't follow the same fixed pattern. Participles, for example, have different attributes than indicative. The code helper tries to protect you from this, but you can override it. When the mood list pops up, press the ESC key to dismiss the helper and then type '?'. Then fill it out with this
.*@v?[ai]*
That should give you all aorist and indicative verbs in all moods.

Mike

[ISalzman]

The problem is that the codes following all the mood identifiers don't follow the same fixed pattern. Participles, for example, have different attributes than indicative. The code helper tries to protect you from this, but you can override it. When the mood list pops up, press the ESC key to dismiss the helper and then type '?'. Then fill it out with this
.*@v?[ai]*
That should give you all aorist and indicative verbs in all moods.

Mike

Thanks, Mike. Do I need the square brackets and what do they do? And, secondly, what is the 'i' for?

[MBushell]

Thanks, Mike. Do I need the square brackets and what do they do? And, secondly, what is the 'i' for?

The 'i' is the code for imperfect. 'a' is for active. The bracket is a "regular expression" character for a group. So [ai] will match either a or. You could stick other tags in there as well.

Mike

[ISalzman]

The 'i' is the code for imperfect. 'a' is for active. The bracket is a "regular expression" character for a group. So [ai] will match either a or. You could stick other tags in there as well.

Mike

Thanks so much, Mike.