Search for a word relative to another word

Question

Hello,

I would like to know the best way to use FileLocator Pro to search for a word in relation to another word. For example, I want to find the word 'apple' whenever it occurs within 5 words (before or after) of the word 'green'.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The operator you're looking for is NEAR, e.g.

apple NEAR green

by default the NEAR works if the words are within 100 characters of each other but you can change that, e.g.

apple NEAR:50 green

would reduce the search distance to 50 characters. Currently you can only search on character distance, ie not word distance.

Comments

Is it possible to span text lines? Do you need to use the [:CNTR:] commands or is there a way to have the NEAR function cross line boundaries? My testing shows that it doesn't cross CR/LF's.

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@gregdsm NEAR does span line boundaries as long as you are using 'Boolean Expressions' and have 'Across whole file' option checked in the Options tab.