MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Variable Search, Replace & Transfer to a new field

flopis · 01-13-2011, 08:43 AM

Calibre computes 12,000 reports & books, and 3 thou authors (which should be about 500). My author and title fields in my library are all messed up.

I would like to fix them with the search and replace in the bulk edit feature. Here are my specific questions:

1) In the author field I have several occurrences of "Lastname", "Firstname" for several authors. How can I correct this to Firstname Lastname in a variable way so that it respect the names of the different authors.
2) In the title field I have author, titles and series; sometimes separated by " - ", and other times by ":" How can I eliminate non-title info and transfer the series info to the series field?

For instance, I have -say- 20 occurrences for:
Alexander, Lloyd - Chronicles of Prydain 01 - The High King, Alexander, Lloyd - Chronicles of Prydain 02 - The Black Cauldron, ... Alexander, Lloyd - Chronicles of Prydain 20 - The Black Song.

What I have being doing --in Search & Replace (bulk meta edit), in the "search field title" (Regular Expression Mode)-- is the following:
(a) eliminate the author " Alexander, Lloyd - " by giving it a Search (I leave Replace blank), and
(b) eliminate the series info " Chronicles of Prydain xx" with the following command in the Search Field "Chronicles of Prydain [0-9]+ - ".

I end up with only the titles. However, that takes too long for so many authors and books.
I have already seen http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/template_lang.html and http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/regexp.html.
I have also experimented with the following expressions: (...), \\n, etc., but I have messed up.

Can anybody help me?

01-13-2011, 08:43 AM	#1
flopis Member Posts: 17 Karma: 7700 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: kindle	Variable Search, Replace & Transfer to a new field Calibre computes 12,000 reports & books, and 3 thou authors (which should be about 500). My author and title fields in my library are all messed up. I would like to fix them with the search and replace in the bulk edit feature. Here are my specific questions: 1) In the author field I have several occurrences of "Lastname", "Firstname" for several authors. How can I correct this to Firstname Lastname in a variable way so that it respect the names of the different authors. 2) In the title field I have author, titles and series; sometimes separated by " - ", and other times by ":" How can I eliminate non-title info and transfer the series info to the series field? For instance, I have -say- 20 occurrences for: Alexander, Lloyd - Chronicles of Prydain 01 - The High King, Alexander, Lloyd - Chronicles of Prydain 02 - The Black Cauldron, ... Alexander, Lloyd - Chronicles of Prydain 20 - The Black Song. What I have being doing --in Search & Replace (bulk meta edit), in the "search field title" (Regular Expression Mode)-- is the following: (a) eliminate the author " Alexander, Lloyd - " by giving it a Search (I leave Replace blank), and (b) eliminate the series info " Chronicles of Prydain xx" with the following command in the Search Field "Chronicles of Prydain [0-9]+ - ". I end up with only the titles. However, that takes too long for so many authors and books. I have already seen http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/template_lang.html and http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/regexp.html. I have also experimented with the following expressions: (...), \\n, etc., but I have messed up. Can anybody help me?