My books are on my hard drive in the format:

Author - Series - Title

I would like to import them into calibre like:

author = Author
title = Series - Title

in v0.6.34, in preferences.add/save, i have changed the regular expression to:

(?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>.+)

i test it with my file names, and it works as intended.

so i go back to add books, on the main menus, and choose my directory.

all the books import like:

author = Author
title = Title

i would expect the import engine to produce the same results as the test button did.

have i done this correctly?

thanks

You have to check the option to read metadata from filesnames and not theinternal metadata in the file

Hi kovidgoyal,
I have to import a huge library with almost all books in pdf format. I'm looking for best way now. If this option is on (read metadata from filesnames) then I am not getting covers from pdfs. But it looks very nice with covers therefore I wish to import covers too.
Is there only one way - to update somehow in batch metadata of books and when to import in calibre?

There is a batch metadata edit dialog (click the arrow next to the edit meta information button)

It can't help me really because means much renames of title per book.
Many books don't have metadata, other - only field "title" with content "author - title", some books - instead of title and author - just a trash as for example "unknown".
So after import I have more as 70% books with wrong author/title.

Hi kovidgoyal,
Is it right that I wrote before - I'll get covers only with option OFF - "read metadata only from file name" ? Would it possible to do the getting of covers separately from metadata? As separate option may be?
Brgds