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MontyJ · 06-20-2017, 04:11 PM

Hola!

I am trying to do what I thought was going to be a simple search and replace in the metadata editor. Here's what I need to do:

Every once in a while I get a batch of books that seem to have a lot of the author initials run together and it becomes tedious to have to manually go through all the entries and manually edit them. So I need to look for connected uppercase letters in the authors field and separate them with a space. Example:

Smith, John XY, or
Smith, XY John, or
John XY Smith, or
Smith, XY

The "XY" needs to come out "X Y", ie a space inserted.

But NOT affect something like Smith, John Xy, or the other arrangements of that.

I have tried:

Code:

\b([A-Z]){2}\b
And that finds the right occurrence, but can't capture it so I can insert a space.

\b([A-Z])([A-Z])\b
But that fails on the "Xy" occurrence when I use the replacement of:

\1 \2
Note the space in between.

I have tried a half dozen other short and lengthy regex's I found, but none work for this situation..

Ideas?

Thanks!

06-20-2017, 04:11 PM	#1
MontyJ Addict Posts: 224 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2012 Device: Kindle	Metadata Regex Search/Replace Hola! I am trying to do what I thought was going to be a simple search and replace in the metadata editor. Here's what I need to do: Every once in a while I get a batch of books that seem to have a lot of the author initials run together and it becomes tedious to have to manually go through all the entries and manually edit them. So I need to look for connected uppercase letters in the authors field and separate them with a space. Example: Smith, John XY, or Smith, XY John, or John XY Smith, or Smith, XY The "XY" needs to come out "X Y", ie a space inserted. But NOT affect something like Smith, John Xy, or the other arrangements of that. I have tried: Code: \b([A-Z]){2}\b And that finds the right occurrence, but can't capture it so I can insert a space. \b([A-Z])([A-Z])\b But that fails on the "Xy" occurrence when I use the replacement of: \1 \2 Note the space in between. I have tried a half dozen other short and lengthy regex's I found, but none work for this situation.. Ideas? Thanks!