Searching for embedded (multi-tier) quotations

E

Eric

Beta Tester
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I want to search to find the "deepest" multi-tier quotations in the Bible. I'm speaking of quotations within quotations. I realize that the KJV is not going to help me since it does not have quotation marks. However, I have two modern versions in SwordSearcher, NASB and NET. They both have quotation marks (single and double).

I guess what I want to do is search for double quotation marks and single quotation marks within a range of X verses (maybe even 10 or 20 verses). Maybe what I want is a blend of "Character String Search" and "Proximity Search".

Thus this question: is there a way to search for punctuation in the "Proximity Search" panel?

Or maybe I'd have to use "RegEx Search"? If so, what would it look like?

I'm assuming the deepest quotations would be four levels, but I don't know that. Here's a convoluted English example to show what I'm getting at.

An exact quotation from the accident report is as follows: "'Bob said this: 'Tom related the status of the crosswalk sign when the accident occurred: "The sign said, 'Don't walk.' " ' "

I guess I need to search for
"[any text or punctuation or space]'[any text or punctuation or space]"[any text or punctuation or space]'​
and that should give me the beginning quotation marks of a 4-level tiered quotation.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
I can't think of any way to do this, sorry.
 
Thanks for trying to think of something. I'm surprised this isn't possible, but I'm not surprised that I don't know how to do it. But that you don't … wow! :) Maybe I could search in a raw pre-Forge text that has quotation marks… Just thinking.
 
Eric said:
Thanks for trying to think of something. I'm surprised this isn't possible, but I'm not surprised that I don't know how to do it. But that you don't … wow! :) Maybe I could search in a raw pre-Forge text that has quotation marks… Just thinking.
Click to expand...

I was thinking in terms of SwordSearcher's search features-- none of them can be combined for this particular type of search. If you have all of the chapters in documents you could theoretically search them with RegEx using an editor that lets you apply a RegEx pattern search across files (or go old-school with grep on the command line) but contriving the RegEx for this particular scenario would hurt my brain.
 
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