For complicated searches in the Advanced Search window.

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# Xiphos

Andy Piper
Pierre Benz
Dr Peter von Kaehne
Karl Kleinpaste
Matthew Talbert

# Advanced Searches

More complicated searches might require the use of the advanced search functions, found under Edit Advanced Search.

In Advanced Search, much more complex queries can be constructed, involving custom search ranges, custom lists of modules over which to search, regular expression matching (see next section), and attribute-based searches such as are found in footnotes or Strong's Hebrew and Greek dictionary references.

The default search uses "lucene" fast searching. It is an optimized search requiring a pre-built index; see the Module Manager's Maintenance page for index creation. In the absence of an index, fallback to the slower, plain multi-word search will be done, or can be selected deliberately here. A web search will provide several references to the syntax needed to put to use the power of optimized Lucene search. A few examples follow:

Simple Searches: just type in the words you want to search for. To return only verses that include all of the words, prefix the word with "+". So, in the KJV, you could find Psalm 23 by searching for "+Lord +shepherd +want". To search for an entire phrase, surround the entire phrase with quotes, like "maketh me to lie down" (note that quotes are unnecessary in all of the other examples).

Single Letter Wildcard: to search for "veil" or "vail", use this syntax "v?il". The "?" represents a single character that could be anything. A more complex example returns both spellings for Isaiah used in the KJV. "?saia?" will return results for "Isaiah" and "Esaias".

Multiple Letter Wildcard: to search for "prophet" or "prophesy" or "prophecy" or "prophesied", use this syntax "prophe*".

AND syntax: in the advanced search to return results for all of the search terms, you must put "AND" in between the terms. To continue our example, if we wish to search for any occurrence of Isaiah or Esaias that also mention either prophet, or prophecy, or prophesy, we can do a search like this: "?saia? AND prophe*".

By default, two standard search ranges are defined, for Old and New Testament; you may wish to define others for e.g. "Gospels" or "Paul's Epistles". One custom module list containing only the first Bible found will be present. If desired, new searches can be performed across only the current results of the previous search. Any modules may be searched, including general books and even dictionaries, in any combination.

Note the tooltip in the screenshot above, for Attributes search. This qualifier is used to perform searches on attributes that are carried with verses, instead of verse content proper, such as footnote content or Strong's Hebrew and Greek references. If this button is selected, specific attribute qualifiers must be made in the Attribute Search tab, at the right end of the tab set. Strong's references are identified with a leading "H" or "G" and the numeric Strong's identifier. Thus, a search of KJV for Strong's Greek #140, using "G140", will return the single result of Matthew 12:18.

If you have indexed your modules, there is a much faster way to search for Strong's references. Enter your search preceded by "lemma:", so to search for Strong's Greek #140, enter "lemma:G140". You must have selected Optimized ("Lucene") for this to work.

Explanations of search syntax are available when either Optimized or Attribute search is selected.

The "Find" button also stops an in-progress search, as its tooltip indicates.

Results will show in the Results tab. If you wish to show Strongs, Morphology, or Footnote tags, make those selections on the Attributes Search tab. Clicking once on the result will show the result in the Advanced Search previewer. Hovering over Strongs, Morphology, Footnote, or Cross-reference tags will show the results in the main previewer. Double-clicking a result will cause the current tab to navigate to that result. This applies to search results in general books and commentaries as well, but note that the respective tab must be visible.

Changes to some of the settings (e.g. scope of search, searched modules, etc.) in Advanced Search will affect the simple search via the side pane but not vice versa.