Calibre Portable insists on using default regular expression for metadata info

larryvega · 03-08-2014, 06:03 AM

Some background info:
I installed Calibre Portable to my Dropbox folder (and upgraded from version 1.25 at the same time). I did this so that my libraries on Dropbox can be in a subfolder to the Calibre installation folder (obviously I want my libraries on Dropbox). This is a requirement if Calibre Portable shall be able to open the most recently used library upon launching the program.

Now a problem has arised. One that I did not have before:

Calibre Portable absolutely insists on using the default regular expression "(?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>[^_]+)" when extracting metadata from the file name. I have some books where the title itself contains "-" and I just want the complete file name to be used as the title. Then afterwards I can specify author manually. However, that won't work anymore.
In version 1.25 (not located in Dropbox) I simply used the regular expression "(?P<title>.+)" which worked nicely and also works in the test field of version 1.26 and 1.27. But no matter if I have the option "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name" ticked or unticked and no matter what type of adding I choose, it applies the default expression and whatever is after "-" is used as the author. I have clicked "Apply" after changing the expression and if I open the window again it has not reverted to the default settings - everything is as when I clicked "Apply".

I can rename the files and replace the "-" with another symbol before adding them to the library, but I'd rather not have to go through this process.

Any ideas?

Cheers!
Larry

kovidgoyal · 03-08-2014, 07:05 AM

This has nothing to do with portable. The behavior you describe is the way calibre is supposed to work. If the user specified regex does not match the file name, or results in the entire filename becoming the title, a default regex that matches the format for filenames calibre uses in its library is tried.

This behavior was broken for a while because of a bug, that bug was fixed in recent versions.

If you want to put the entire filename in tot he title field, you can use the search and replace tab of the bulk metadata edit dialog to do it after importing.

kovidgoyal · 03-08-2014, 07:42 AM

I have committed a slight change to that behavior:

https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...204f57c4a37403

03-08-2014, 06:03 AM	#1
larryvega Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2014 Device: Samsung Galaxy S4 mini	Calibre Portable insists on using default regular expression for metadata info Some background info: I installed Calibre Portable to my Dropbox folder (and upgraded from version 1.25 at the same time). I did this so that my libraries on Dropbox can be in a subfolder to the Calibre installation folder (obviously I want my libraries on Dropbox). This is a requirement if Calibre Portable shall be able to open the most recently used library upon launching the program. Now a problem has arised. One that I did not have before: Calibre Portable absolutely insists on using the default regular expression "(?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>[^_]+)" when extracting metadata from the file name. I have some books where the title itself contains "-" and I just want the complete file name to be used as the title. Then afterwards I can specify author manually. However, that won't work anymore. In version 1.25 (not located in Dropbox) I simply used the regular expression "(?P<title>.+)" which worked nicely and also works in the test field of version 1.26 and 1.27. But no matter if I have the option "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name" ticked or unticked and no matter what type of adding I choose, it applies the default expression and whatever is after "-" is used as the author. I have clicked "Apply" after changing the expression and if I open the window again it has not reverted to the default settings - everything is as when I clicked "Apply". I can rename the files and replace the "-" with another symbol before adding them to the library, but I'd rather not have to go through this process. Any ideas? Cheers! Larry

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03-08-2014, 07:05 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,896 Karma: 22666668 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	This has nothing to do with portable. The behavior you describe is the way calibre is supposed to work. If the user specified regex does not match the file name, or results in the entire filename becoming the title, a default regex that matches the format for filenames calibre uses in its library is tried. This behavior was broken for a while because of a bug, that bug was fixed in recent versions. If you want to put the entire filename in tot he title field, you can use the search and replace tab of the bulk metadata edit dialog to do it after importing.

03-08-2014, 07:42 AM	#3
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,896 Karma: 22666668 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	I have committed a slight change to that behavior: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...204f57c4a37403

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