MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Metadata Search & Replace

Aldebaranian · 09-27-2011, 02:43 PM

Hi all,

I've just started using calibre and very happy with it so far! However I am trying to tidy up my import of a bunch of ebooks acquired over some time and named rather chaotically. I try to do this using the Bulk Metadata function.

I have a fair few files and after importing some of them have been given author names of the form:

Case 1 <author> - <series> - <number>

while others might have

Case 2 <author> - <series>

Now, I wanted to avoid doing things by hand so I planned to use regex replacement to extract the series with an expression of the kind:

Author - ([^-]+) - ([0-9]+)

and then put \1 into series.

That works well for Case 1 above, but not for Case 2 because it places the entire author into \1.

Is there a way to tell calibre that when I do regex search and replace that if the regex _doesn't_ match I do not want anything inserted into the metadata? It seems a reasonable way to operate to me but it doesn't seem to be how it works. Thus I'm probably doing something silly

Thx!

09-27-2011, 02:43 PM	#1
Aldebaranian Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 1126 Join Date: Sep 2011 Device: none	Metadata Search & Replace - when it doesn't match Hi all, I've just started using calibre and very happy with it so far! However I am trying to tidy up my import of a bunch of ebooks acquired over some time and named rather chaotically. I try to do this using the Bulk Metadata function. I have a fair few files and after importing some of them have been given author names of the form: Case 1 <author> - <series> - <number> while others might have Case 2 <author> - <series> Now, I wanted to avoid doing things by hand so I planned to use regex replacement to extract the series with an expression of the kind: Author - ([^-]+) - ([0-9]+) and then put \1 into series. That works well for Case 1 above, but not for Case 2 because it places the entire author into \1. Is there a way to tell calibre that when I do regex search and replace that if the regex _doesn't_ match I do not want anything inserted into the metadata? It seems a reasonable way to operate to me but it doesn't seem to be how it works. Thus I'm probably doing something silly Thx!