creating a tag rule

[Rellwood]

Through some rule or another I have ended up with a few tags with leading periods. They are multiple word tags that have the period between the words, but they have a leading period. I must have had a rule to delete whatever parent word/tag it was and it left the period (heirarchal shelves)

Since I can't do a search and replace on the period (multiple periods per tag), I was wondering if someone could help me by showing me a quick tag mapper rule or a regex rule that I can use in search replace in edit that would find and delete these leading periods, but retain the others. I have not yet figured out how the rules quite work and the "matches pattern" seems to have me stumped. I can do the keep, remove, split, replace, but "matches pattern" is a toss up for me.

I always thought that it meant that if a certain word was shown anywhere in the tag then it "matched the pattern" and the rule would be applied. It doesn't seem to be that easy. I have looked online and found resources, but (forgive me) I have certain cognitive difficulties that make understanding the terms difficult. I have got a lot of things down pat, but coding and regex, python has always been my Achilles heel.


Please and thank you.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

Through some rule or another I have ended up with a few tags with leading periods. They are multiple word tags that have the period between the words, but they have a leading period. I must have had a rule to delete whatever parent word/tag it was and it left the period (heirarchal shelves)

Since I can't do a search and replace on the period (multiple periods per tag) ...

Why not? You can match tags with a leading period with the regexp

^\.

It isn't clear what you want to do with these tags so I can't go beyond the search pattern.

Depending on how many there are of these you might find it faster to change them in "Manage tags" (right click on Tags in the tag browser)

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

I have got a lot of things down pat, but coding and regex, python has always been my Achilles heel.

For future uses, this site was sent to me by another user on here and its explanations often help me untangle the mess of my own regexes:
https://regex101.com/

[Rellwood]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

For future uses, this site was sent to me by another user on here and its explanations often help me untangle the mess of my own regexes:
https://regex101.com/

Thanks! I will check it out!

[Rellwood]

Originally Posted by chaley

Why not? You can match tags with a leading period with the regexp

^\.

It isn't clear what you want to do with these tags so I can't go beyond the search pattern.

Depending on how many there are of these you might find it faster to change them in "Manage tags" (right click on Tags in the tag browser)

There are not a lot of these tags, but enough that I didn't want to go about manually deleting those leading periods. They are simply book tags and nothing else. I have them in heirarchal form and for whatever reason I noticed that was getting some that had dropped the parent tag, leaving only the period.

I didn't want to do anything else but fix them so the period was gone.

Thanks for the code. It was just what I was looking for.

[Rellwood]

I have a question about "Manage Tags" is it a way of permanently changing tags, or does it just work on the tags at the given time. I ahve been going about changing and deleting tags and really hope that it isn't permanent. I have used it as a quick way to bulk delete tags that I may want later.

If it is permanent, is there a way of "resetting" it?

[ownedbycats]

The tag mapping only apply when you press the OK button. It only applies to the books currently showing in the book list too.

Also they run in the order that they appear in the list. You can use the Test Rules button to make sure it has an expected effect.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

I have a question about "Manage Tags" is it a way of permanently changing tags, or does it just work on the tags at the given time. I ahve been going about changing and deleting tags and really hope that it isn't permanent. I have used it as a quick way to bulk delete tags that I may want later.

If it is permanent, is there a way of "resetting" it?

I am not sure what you are asking. Manage Tags works on the tags "at the moment", possibly taking into consideration a virtual library. Changes made on that dialog take effect when you press OK, at which point the changes are permanent and cannot be undone short of restoring calibre's database.

Thus, if you delete a tag then it removed from all books in the current virtual library, if there is one and the box is checked. In most cases the tag is gone -- removed from calibre's database. The only time it is not removed is if you are using a virtual library and the tag exists in books not in the VL.