Easiest way to count the occurrence of a word across a few EPUB books?

[avid01]

I see we have dedicated threads for a few different e-book software, which if good. I have no idea in which software's topic to ask, so maybe I should ask it here?

I want to count for the occurrence of a word across a few EPUB books. What's the easiest or best ways to accomplish that? The search function didn't really give clue to this type of search.

[Ripplinger]

I'm more familiar with Sigil since I use that most often, but in the lower right corner when you search for a word in Sigil, click the "Count all" button and it will show you the number of times the word occurs. Then just do that for any other books.

Others may have their favorite software they use for such functions.

[ilovejedd]

I keep plain text copies of my ebooks and just use Notepad++ "Find in Files" feature when I need to search for something.

If you're running Linux, I think there may be a Linux-specific plugin for Calibre that will do full text searches.

[ProDigit]

Well, your best bet is Kindle's X-ray.
It'll tell you per book, so if you have a kindle with X-ray, you just check each book for the word on X-ray.

Easiest solution.

Another solution, is to find and download a digital version of the book online (could be txt, epub, pdf, ...) , and search with a word processor on a pc.

[avid01]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I'm more familiar with Sigil since I use that most often, but in the lower right corner when you search for a word in Sigil, click the "Count all" button and it will show you the number of times the word occurs. Then just do that for any other books.

I fired up an EPUB in Sigil, even found "Count all," but it dissects the book into single HTML files and it seems it wants to find my word on one page only at a time. That's how much familiar I'm with Sigil.

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

I keep plain text copies of my ebooks and just use Notepad++ "Find in Files" feature when I need to search for something.

It was easy to convert my ePUBs to TXT with Calibre, but the second part doesn't seem to be so straightforward and a Google search didn't help much, either.

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Well, your best bet is Kindle's X-ray.
It'll tell you per book, so if you have a kindle with X-ray, you just check each book for the word on X-ray.

Easiest solution.

Thanks, if all else (the above) fails, I may try this one. My old Kindle doesn't have this feature built-in and my first preference is solving the quest with free (as in free software) and open source tools. I'm on a PC.

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Another solution, is to find and download a digital version of the book online (could be txt, epub, pdf, ...) , and search with a word processor on a pc.

Hint: as I stated in the thread stater I have the books in EPUB format. With a word processor? That's a little vague for a complete solution.

Thanks to all!

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by avid01

I fired up an EPUB in Sigil, even found "Count all," but it dissects the book into single HTML files and it seems it wants to find my word on one page only at a time.

On the "Search" dialog, change the "Mode" dropdown at the bottom from "Current File" to "All HTML Files". Then run "Count All" again.

[DiapDealer]

For the record: Sigil doesn't dissect the book into individual html files; the ebook's creator does (because it's common practice to do so). Sigil will happily allow someone to create an epub with one monstrous html file if they like.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by avid01

I fired up an EPUB in Sigil, even found "Count all," but it dissects the book into single HTML files and it seems it wants to find my word on one page only at a time. That's how much familiar I'm with Sigil.

Originally Posted by sjfan

On the "Search" dialog, change the "Mode" dropdown at the bottom from "Current File" to "All HTML Files". Then run "Count All" again.

Do what sjfan said to fix that. My normal mode is "All HTML Files" so I forgot to mention that setting. It's just under the search box entries. That option is very handy when you do need to search a current page only.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by avid01

It was easy to convert my ePUBs to TXT with Calibre, but the second part doesn't seem to be so straightforward and a Google search didn't help much, either.

Install Notepad++. There's a portable version, too, if you don't want it cluttering your programs.

1. Select Search - Find in Files
2. Input the relevant parameters (search text, file filters, directory, case sensitivity, etc)
3. Click on Find All

Screenshots are attached for reference.

For me, Notepad++ (or similar text editors) is the easiest option since I sometimes have to search through hundreds of different ebooks (typically for lines that I remember but didn't annotate/lost the annotation).

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by avid01

I want to count for the occurrence of a word across a few EPUB books. What's the easiest or best ways to accomplish that?

You could use EPUBMerge plugin for Calibre:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=169744

merge all of them into one behemoth EPUB, and then open it in Calibre's Editor and use Tools > Check Spelling.

AZARDI is an EPUB reader that lets you search across multiple EPUBs:

http://azardi.infogridpacific.com/

You have to right click each EPUB and "Index" it, but after that you can search across them freely.

May I ask what the use-case is? Are you trying to see how often a character is mentioned in a series?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by avid01

I fired up an EPUB in Sigil, even found "Count all," but it dissects the book into single HTML files and it seems it wants to find my word on one page only at a time. That's how much familiar I'm with Sigil.

Hmmm... Enter text to find in the Find: box, Mode: Normal, All HTML files, Up/Down doesn't matter if Wrap is checked and click Count All.

[ProDigit]

Unpack the ebooks with a compression tool.
Search for programs in google:
Free tools include '7z' (free program), 'winrar' (free trial), or 'winzip' (evaluation)

Then edit using an HTML editor, or word processor, or worst case, an advanced notepad:
- Free HTML editor: NVU, Kompozer, Microsoft FrontPage
- Free office and word editor: Apache OpenOffice
- Notepads (free): Notepad++, Windows included Notepad or Wordpad.

[GERGE]

Under macOS or Linux it is pretty easy. Create this bash script and make it executable:

#!/bin/bash
PAT=${1:?"Usage: grep-epub PAT *.epub files to grep"}
shift
: ${1:?"Need epub files to grep"}
for i in $* ;do
  echo $0 $i
  unzip -p $i "*.htm*" "*.xml" "*.opf"   |
    perl -lpe 's![<][^>]{1,200}?[>]!!g;' |
    grep -Pinaso  ".{0,60}$PAT.{0,60}"   |
    grep -Pi --color "$PAT"
done

Put it somewhere in your home and link it to /usr/local/bin, this is how I did it:

sudo ln -s ~/Apps/CLI/grep-epub.sh /usr/local/bin/grep-epub

Then just use it like this:

To find all occurences of sea in Dubliners:

grep-epub "sea" Dubliners.epub

To find only the word sea"

grep-epub " sea " Dubliners.epub

To count, just use it with wc, GNU word count utility.

In Windows, you can use this with Linux subsystem.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by avid01

I see we have dedicated threads for a few different e-book software, which if good. I have no idea in which software's topic to ask, so maybe I should ask it here?

I want to count for the occurrence of a word across a few EPUB books. What's the easiest or best ways to accomplish that? The search function didn't really give clue to this type of search.

The simplest way to do what you want is to use Calibre. Install the Quality Check plugin. It will allow you to do a search for words in ePub eBooks of your choice. You can select the ePub you want to search and it will find the ePub that contain our search words.