Comparing Search Engines

[Anyu]

There is a freeware Bible Search Engine called PureBibleSearch at http://www.purebiblesearch.com that I compared with Bible Analyzer Search. I search the word "Satan", and PureBibleSearch showed 55 hits, while BA showed 56 hits. When I examined I found out that BA included "Satan's" accounting for the 56 hits. When I tried to Exclude "Satan's" in BA, it returned 54 hits. Why? Because it excluded an entire verse, Rev.2:13, where there is "Satan's", not noting that there is also a "Satan", accounting for the 54 hits, instead of 55.
Rev 2:13, I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.

There surely are other different results for different searches. I wonder if there is any way to incorporate the PureBibleSearch source code with BA to make it dead accurate, as I have found for PureBibleSearch ?

[Tim]

Bible Analyzer searched correctly and is quite accurate. The issue is how search methods determine word boundaries. Most regular expression engines (BA and most other software uses Reg Exes for searching) use a word boundary indicator ('\b') that treats any non letter character as a word boundary. In this case the apostrophe signals the end of a word. That is why it was counted.

If one wants to do a search for words excluding possessives that have an apostrophe ('s) then a BA Reg Ex search can be used. if you enter "satan[^']" the engine will only find words NOT followed by an apostrophe, as below.

search1.jpg (14.26 KiB) Viewed 15435 times

search2.jpg (19.38 KiB) Viewed 15435 times