What's Wrong with my Search String?

Hi Everyone,

I had a question about searching and I was hoping you could help me clarify something.

What I was trying to do was figure out a search string that would bring me to this article in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities about flowers on the graves of the dead.

When I tried the search string "flowers NEAR (grave OR tomb)" (without quotation marks) I got 16 hits back, but none of them go to the correct article. Furthermore, the word "NEAR" which I thought was a boolean operator turned up two results for "near" and "nearly" (the option "match all word forms was checked.)

However, when I remove the parenthesis and the word "tomb", the entry I'm looking for is the second one listed.

I guess my questions are:

1. Why did the first string not return my result?

2. Why would the word "near" return in a result instead of acting as a boolean operator?

I've had Logos since the late 90's and still can't master searching. Crying

Many thanks in advance,

Ryan

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Comments

JT (alabama24)

Does this wiki article help? https://wiki.logos.com/Search_HELP#id:2.2e_.28Logical.29_OR.2c_AND.2c_ANDNOT

EDIT: From the article: "Note you must use a list with proximity operators e.g. (who, whoever, whom) NEAR Christ because (who OR whoever OR whom) NEAR Christ will give incorrect results"

RyanB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/710908#Comment_710908

Yep, Alabama good catch. When I try the search again with commas instead of the word "or" the search comes up correctly. Thanks for the help.

I guess I can understand how double operators (in this case "or" and "near") might cause the system confusion but I'm still not sure why the words "near" and "nearly" came up.

Either way I now know that commas are the way to go. Thanks again.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/710931#Comment_710931

I'm still not sure why the words "near" and "nearly" came up.

The boolean OR causes untold confusion when used that way. The search engine is OK with a boolean expression flowers AND (grave OR tomb), so it interprets flowers NEAR (grave OR tomb) as flowers AND near AND (grave OR tomb).

The alternative to flowers NEAR (grave, tomb) is flowers NEAR grave OR flowers NEAR tomb which counts the hits differently, being boolean.

RyanB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/711119#Comment_711119

Thanks for the insight Dave. I appreciate it.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/710931#Comment_710931

I'm still not sure why the words "near" and "nearly" came up

Because your keywords weren't valid, Logos interpreted your keywords as ordinary words you were searching for.