Using ELS - page 1
Version 2 - March 19, 2005
Using The "ELS" Program
ELS is a Windows program that halps you examine a text file for Equidistant Letter
Sequences (ELS's) that the file may contain.
Opening A File
Use the File|Open menu command. If the file extension is ELS the format is assumed to
be "ELS-form" and it is read directly into memory for further processing. The total number of
letters in the file is displayed in the main window, e.g., 20139 Text Letters..
On the other hand, if the file extension is not ELS, then the format is assumed to be
"non-ELS-form", i.e., line-by-line form as used by Notepad and other simple text processors.
This file is read from disk, line by line, and converted as follows:
All digits, punctuation, newlines, carriage returns, linefeeds, and spaces are ignored.
Only alphabetic characters are retained. They are converted to upper-case, and added to
the ELS-format file being formed.
By default, the final ELS-format file is written back to disk, with the same path and name as
the original file, but with the new file extension ".ELS".
The number of lines of text in the original text file is shown in a special Lines of Text
Comverted window, and then the total number of letters in the file is displayed as above.
Proofing the ELS File
Short segments of the ELS file in memory can be viewed by checking the "Proof the
Text" checkbox, and then specifying either:
Whatever you type into the Word(s) To
a particular word or phrase you want to find in the file. Search For box is case-insenstive. The
program automatically converts all text
Type this into the Word(s) To Search For textbox.
to upper-case.
or
the character position in the file you would like to view. Type this number in the Search
Start Character Position textbox, and leave the Word(s) To Search For textbox blank.
Click the Search command button to initiate the search.
Searching for ELS's
Make sure the Proof The Text checkbox is not checked, and then type into the Word(s)
To Search For textbox two or more characters (do not include
You can quickly "jump" to any
of these 5 textboxes by using
spaces between words). You can qualify (i.e., limit) the search by
the function keys F1 to F5 .
typing values into the following text boxes:
Search Start Character Position. The default of "1" means search the entire ELS file.
Any other number "n" skips the first "n-1" characters of the file.
Minimum Skip. The default of "1" means ordinary words (i.e., with skip values = 1) will
also be found, along with occurrences of the search characters with longer skip values.
Maximum Skip. The default value of "0" means no upper limit to the skip value.
Max Finds. The program will stop after the specified number of "hits" (finds). The value
of "0" means no limit to the number of finds.
Using ELS - page 2
Version 2 - March 19, 2005
When the Windows focus is on any
When you have entered the values you want into these four
of the qualification boxes, the Tab
"search qualification" boxes, click on the Search command
key will let you move quickly
button to initiate the search.
through the rest of them, and then
The program searches the file for ELS occurrences,
the Search and Copy Results to
with both positive and negative skip values. Results are
Clipboard buttons, too.
reported in the Results Window.
The seconds remaining message estimates, every second, how much longer it will take for
the entire file to be scanned. This estimate is based only on the percentage of the file that
has been searched so far. The estimate does not take into account any Max Finds
qualification you may have made.
You can abort a search in progress by clicking on the Abort command button.
The Progress Bar shows how far through the file the analysis has proceeded. At the end of
a search, the Progress Bar should finally be completely filled, unless the analysis stopped
because the Max Finds limit was reached, or because you Aborted the search. The
Progress Bar is green during a search; it turns black when the search is completed.
The Results Window shows the individual ELS's found. Each ELS line is made up of five
parts, separated by spaces, as follows:
start
skip
preceeding_text
search_word(s)
following_text
start is the character position in the file where the ELS begins.
skip is the positive or negative skip value of the ELS.
search_word(s) is a copy of the text you specified in Word(s) To Search For.
preceeding_text and following_text are the logical extensions of the ELS, based on the
given skip value. If the dash (-) character appears in one of these fields, it means that the
ELS cannot be extended this far because it would go beyond the limits of the text file. If
skip is negative, the preceeding_text actually comes later in the text file than the
search_word(s) . For example,
2,677
-1 AWFIRETAWOTUOYDAELYL BILL AFNILLIWEHDNAGNIO
shows an ELS from the search word "BILL". The ELS begins at location 2677 in the file,
and has a skip value of -1. In the Moby Dick text from which this ELS was found, you
can see (by reading the line backwards) that the letters "bill" are imbedded in the text
"…and he will infallibly lead you water if …"
If you want to save the Search results, click on the Copy Results To Clipboard
button. You can then paste them into a wordprocessor or spreadsheet, and save them to disk, for
later reference.
Tips
If you are trying to verify someone else's report of an ELS, "bracket" the reported
parameters by entering nearby values into the qualification boxes to speed up the search
process. Also you can shorten the Word To Search For to let you better see the program's
progress in trying to find matches.
robert.borrmann@manhattan.edu