What is the difference between CQL and regular expressions?

    Regular expressions are used to set conditions for strings of characters, e.g. for letters inside a word (token) or for characters inside a POS tag.
    These tools have options to use regular expressions:
    • wordlists (e.g. to find words containing specific characters)
    • n-grams
    • keywords
    • concordance, ADVANCED tab with these search types: lemma, word, phrase, character (not with the simple search options)

    CQL generates a concordance for one or more tokens. For example, to find a sequence of these 3 tokens: the word receive followed by a definite article followed by a noun. It can only be used in the concordance, on the ADVANCED tab with the CQL search option selected. CQL cannot be used in other Sketch Engine tools.

    Regular expressions and CQL
    Regular can be used inside a CQL query.  This query will find words starting dis- followed by a verb (any tag starting V-):
    [word="dis.*"] [tag="V.*"]
    dis.* and V.* are regular expressions.
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