Calibre removes final 'x' from ISBNs when importing books

jackbrown · 06-08-2011, 12:25 PM

I have a very large collection of ebooks in which the files are titled in the style: ISBN.Press.Name.Title.of.book.pdf

About a third of them have an 'x' as the final 'digit' in the ISBN. When I try to bring them in to Calibre, the program strips out the final 'x' from the ISBN, rendering them useless for the purpose of metadata lookups, which is the main reason I am using Calibre.

Is there a simple way to reconfigure the import plugin so that it doesn't remove trailing 'x's from ISBNs? And why does it do that in the first place.

I am running version 0.8.4 ; I tried 0.8.5 but the metadata lookups have pretty much stopped working altogether in that version, so I downgraded again.

Sample title:
019280104X.Oxford.University.Press.USA.The.Oxford. Dictionary.of.Slang.May.2000.pdf

Calibre parses that ISBN as:
019280104

When you click on that ID, the worldcat lookup obviously finds nothing.

EDIT: I should add that right now the regular expression for importing is set as:
(?P<isbn>[0123456789x]+).(?P<title>.+)
which should allow the 'x' to stay, but calibre is nevertheless erasing them from the 'ids' field, and leaving only the nine digits that precede the 'x's

jackbrown · 06-08-2011, 12:32 PM

Well, I am a little dim aren't I? Just by writing that clarification, I realized that of course regular expressions are case sensitive. The 'x' in the RegEx was lower case, and those in my titles are upper case. Added an upper case 'X' to the brackets, problem solved.

I hope my post here will point the way for some other poor soul.

06-08-2011, 12:25 PM	#1
jackbrown Enthusiast Posts: 36 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: San Francisco USA/North Africa	Calibre removes final 'x' from ISBNs when importing books I have a very large collection of ebooks in which the files are titled in the style: ISBN.Press.Name.Title.of.book.pdf About a third of them have an 'x' as the final 'digit' in the ISBN. When I try to bring them in to Calibre, the program strips out the final 'x' from the ISBN, rendering them useless for the purpose of metadata lookups, which is the main reason I am using Calibre. Is there a simple way to reconfigure the import plugin so that it doesn't remove trailing 'x's from ISBNs? And why does it do that in the first place. I am running version 0.8.4 ; I tried 0.8.5 but the metadata lookups have pretty much stopped working altogether in that version, so I downgraded again. Sample title: 019280104X.Oxford.University.Press.USA.The.Oxford. Dictionary.of.Slang.May.2000.pdf Calibre parses that ISBN as: 019280104 When you click on that ID, the worldcat lookup obviously finds nothing. EDIT: I should add that right now the regular expression for importing is set as: (?P<isbn>[0123456789x]+).(?P<title>.+) which should allow the 'x' to stay, but calibre is nevertheless erasing them from the 'ids' field, and leaving only the nine digits that precede the 'x's Last edited by jackbrown; 06-08-2011 at 12:29 PM. Reason: clarify regular expression

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06-08-2011, 12:32 PM	#2
jackbrown Enthusiast Posts: 36 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: San Francisco USA/North Africa	Well, I am a little dim aren't I? Just by writing that clarification, I realized that of course regular expressions are case sensitive. The 'x' in the RegEx was lower case, and those in my titles are upper case. Added an upper case 'X' to the brackets, problem solved. I hope my post here will point the way for some other poor soul.

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