Calibre book adding: Regular expression request...

Spiffy · 04-05-2010, 03:40 PM

Probably the five millionth since this forum was created, I suppose. :-)

Many of my files are kept in the following naming format:

L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit

Please note those square brackets are virtually always used in what I've got stored, and the <space><single dash><space> between an author and series/series number and between that and the book title is also pretty consistent.

Assuming the vast majority of my books follow this format, does anyone have a good expression to add them with?

Ideally the expression would recognize the square brackets as a tip off that a book series and book number are being disclosed. Is such a thing even possible? I ask, because if a book ISN'T part of a series, the existing file name is probably something more like this:

H. G. Wells - The Time Machine.epub

OPTIONALLY, its at least possible (although I bet this is even harder to resolve) that some files may look like this:

Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (html).zip

Pie in the sky, if those ROUND brackets could be a tip off to ignore something as NOT being part of a book title, that would be ideal. Yeah, even ignorant of how to build these expressions properly, I'm skeptical.

Does anyone out there have stuff following approximately these "rules", and what have you done to best ensure proper Calibre "importing"? ANY subset of the requirements I list above, dealing with series names in square brackets, ignoring stuff in round brackets, etc. would be better than nothing, but I don't expect much.

Please note that I have zero ability at scripting, so I'm really just asking what the best canned solution is. If its "you're out of luck" I guess I'll figure something else out. If there are proper expressions to handle this already, great. If there are other third party tools outside of Calibre to accurately mass rename files FIRST in an acceptably way, I suppose that's something I'd be willing to try as well (although using a 2nd tool first seems redundant if Calibre can be made to do it).

Thanks infinitely in advance for any possible suggestions!

Dopedangel · 04-06-2010, 05:07 AM

I had the same problem so I started using booksorter
to rename my files to

Author - Series # - Title.lit

http://iterati.org/ebookTools/BookSorter/Default.aspx

then used this for the add to

(?P<author>[^_-]+) -?\s*(?P<series>[^_0-9-]*)(?P<series_index>[0-9]*)\s*-\s*(?P<title>[^_].+) ?

I did see somewhere on the forum the regex you are looking for but couldn't find it

Spiffy · 04-06-2010, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

I had the same problem so I started using booksorter
to rename my files to

Author - Series # - Title.lit

http://iterati.org/ebookTools/BookSorter/Default.aspx

then used this for the add to

(?P<author>[^_-]+) -?\s*(?P<series>[^_0-9-]*)(?P<series_index>[0-9]*)\s*-\s*(?P<title>[^_].+) ?

I did see somewhere on the forum the regex you are looking for but couldn't find it

Your standard naming includes no brackets, right?

Another way to do this DID occur to me this morning. Doing it in discrete steps.

First, importing the books without a series on their own, with a fairly standard regex.

Then going back and CHANGING the regex to expect a series and importing THOSE books.

But I guess I still would have to deal with the square brackets. I either have to have a way to mass remove them, or mass ignore them in an import.

The second problem, the format occasionally being at the end in round brackets, I suppose I just have to live with (and manually erase after the fact).

Starson17 · 04-06-2010, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiffy

Your standard naming includes no brackets, right?

I started to respond to this twice, but I'm not at home and can't test anything I post. It's pretty easy to make the brackets optional if everything else is right.
this is an optional open bracket:

\[?

and this is an optional closed bracket:

\]?

Try this (totally untested):

Code:

wrong code posted (untested)

no, try this (tested):

Code:

^((?P<author>([^\-_0-9]+)(?=\s*-\s*)(?!\s*-\s*[0-9.]+)|\b))(\s*-\s*)?(\[?(?P<series>[^0-9\-]+) (- )?(?P<series_index>[0-9.]+)\]?\s*-\s*)?(?P<title>.+)

Spiffy · 04-06-2010, 07:24 PM

Hmm. Good to know that.

The expression doesn't seem to work, unfortunately. But I appreciate the try.

When you use that string and run the test tool inside Calibre against this book:

L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit

The following shows in the test results:

Title: L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz
Authors - nothing
Series - nothing
Series index - nothing

Starson17 · 04-06-2010, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiffy

Hmm. Good to know that.

The expression doesn't seem to work, unfortunately.

Try again with edited code above.. I miscounted parentheses.

Spiffy · 04-06-2010, 07:58 PM

Genius work. Thank you--that's quite nifty. It even recognizes that if there's no brackets (or is it counting dashes?), there's no series, and realizes that the position of the title will be different.

I hate to push, but do you know a way to address the other main issue I had? The occasional optional file type sandwiched between ROUND brackets? Like so:

Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (html).zip

Ideally, the best result would be to drop those file types, round brackets and everything between them, from the Title. Inevitably legit titles with round brackets could be affected, I guess, but that's a small price to pay.

I won't be greedy though. You've already saved me a ton of potential headache.

Starson17 · 04-06-2010, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiffy

I hate to push

(staggering a bit) ..... try this:

Code:

^((?P<author>([^\-_0-9]+)(?=\s*-\s*)(?!\s*-\s*[0-9.]+)|\b))(\s*-\s*)?(\[?(?P<series>[^0-9\-]+) (- )?(?P<series_index>[0-9.]+)\]?\s*-\s*)?(?P<title>[a-zA-Z1-9 ]+)(\(.*\))?$

It will have trouble with titles that have anything other than alphanumerics in the title.

Spiffy · 04-06-2010, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starson17

(staggering a bit) ..... try this:

Code:

^((?P<author>([^\-_0-9]+)(?=\s*-\s*)(?!\s*-\s*[0-9.]+)|\b))(\s*-\s*)?(\[?(?P<series>[^0-9\-]+) (- )?(?P<series_index>[0-9.]+)\]?\s*-\s*)?(?P<title>[a-zA-Z1-9 ]+)(\(.*\))?$

It will have trouble with titles that have anything other than alphanumerics in the title.

Heh. Yeah, it was a fairly big ask, I know. Staggering indeed!

No dice though. It tosses everything into title field again.

Starson17 · 04-06-2010, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiffy

It tosses everything into title field again.

It works for me. Try again, or show me what you're testing it on. It correctly parsed all of these:

L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit
L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz(lit).lit
L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz 02 - The Marvelous Land of Oz(lit).lit
L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz 02 - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit

Spiffy · 04-06-2010, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starson17

It works for me. Try again, or show me what you're testing it on. It correctly parsed all of these:

L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit
L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz(lit).lit
L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz 02 - The Marvelous Land of Oz(lit).lit
L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz 02 - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit

You are correct! Maybe I chopped off a character when I did the copy and paste last time.

tinear · 04-09-2010, 07:54 PM

Actually, there are a few instances that it doesn't work to kill version numbers and formats after the title (although it is beautifully written).
Replacing ($.*$)?$ with .+ seems to drop everything after the title.

Spiffy · 04-11-2010, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starson17

(staggering a bit) ..... try this:

Code:

^((?P<author>([^\-_0-9]+)(?=\s*-\s*)(?!\s*-\s*[0-9.]+)|\b))(\s*-\s*)?(\[?(?P<series>[^0-9\-]+) (- )?(?P<series_index>[0-9.]+)\]?\s*-\s*)?(?P<title>[a-zA-Z1-9 ]+)(\(.*\))?$

It will have trouble with titles that have anything other than alphanumerics in the title.

Actually, I think I figured out one of the issues with this.

The regex works perfectly with any of this:

Quote:

L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit
L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz(lit).lit
L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz 02 - The Marvelous Land of Oz(lit).lit
L. Frank Baum - Wizard of Oz 02 - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit

But if somehow THIS makes it's way into the parsing, disaster results:

Quote:

L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz[lit].lit

I think I had some unexpected files which were a bit messed up by using square brackets around the file type near the end rather than round ones. I probably just have to track those down "by hand".

Spiffy · 04-11-2010, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tinear

Actually, there are a few instances that it doesn't work to kill version numbers and formats after the title (although it is beautifully written).
Replacing ($.*$)?$ with .+ seems to drop everything after the title.

In other words?

Quote:

^((?P<author>([^\-_0-9]+)(?=\s*-\s*)(?!\s*-\s*[0-9.]+)|\b))(\s*-\s*)?(\[?(?P<series>[^0-9\-]+) (- )?(?P<series_index>[0-9.]+)\]?\s*-\s*)?(?P<title>[a-zA-Z1-9 ]+).+

Yes. I THINK that works. What I've tested so far (including "L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz[lit].lit ") has no problem.

MSWallack · 04-13-2010, 06:24 PM

This is so close to what I'm trying to accomplish that I thought it was worth posting my query, too. In my case, book titles are formatted like this:

Brown, Dan - The Lost Symbol [Robert Langdon #3].epub

AuthorLast, AuthorFirst - Title [Series #SeriesNum].format

It looks like the code that was provided is very close, but I'm not quite sure where the "delimeters" (not sure of the right term) are between the Author, Series, and Title sections of the RE.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

04-05-2010, 03:40 PM	#1
Spiffy Groupie Posts: 160 Karma: 416 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: Astak EZ Reader Pro AND Sony PRS-505	Calibre book adding: Regular expression request... Probably the five millionth since this forum was created, I suppose. :-) Many of my files are kept in the following naming format: L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit Please note those square brackets are virtually always used in what I've got stored, and the <space><single dash><space> between an author and series/series number and between that and the book title is also pretty consistent. Assuming the vast majority of my books follow this format, does anyone have a good expression to add them with? Ideally the expression would recognize the square brackets as a tip off that a book series and book number are being disclosed. Is such a thing even possible? I ask, because if a book ISN'T part of a series, the existing file name is probably something more like this: H. G. Wells - The Time Machine.epub OPTIONALLY, its at least possible (although I bet this is even harder to resolve) that some files may look like this: Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (html).zip Pie in the sky, if those ROUND brackets could be a tip off to ignore something as NOT being part of a book title, that would be ideal. Yeah, even ignorant of how to build these expressions properly, I'm skeptical. Does anyone out there have stuff following approximately these "rules", and what have you done to best ensure proper Calibre "importing"? ANY subset of the requirements I list above, dealing with series names in square brackets, ignoring stuff in round brackets, etc. would be better than nothing, but I don't expect much. Please note that I have zero ability at scripting, so I'm really just asking what the best canned solution is. If its "you're out of luck" I guess I'll figure something else out. If there are proper expressions to handle this already, great. If there are other third party tools outside of Calibre to accurately mass rename files FIRST in an acceptably way, I suppose that's something I'd be willing to try as well (although using a 2nd tool first seems redundant if Calibre can be made to do it). Thanks infinitely in advance for any possible suggestions! Last edited by Spiffy; 04-05-2010 at 03:45 PM.

04-09-2010, 07:54 PM	#12
tinear Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: none	Actually, there are a few instances that it doesn't work to kill version numbers and formats after the title (although it is beautifully written). Replacing (\(.*\))?$ with .+ seems to drop everything after the title.

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04-06-2010, 05:07 AM	#2
Dopedangel Wizard Posts: 1,798 Karma: 30548723 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Singapore Device: Boyue	I had the same problem so I started using booksorter to rename my files to Author - Series # - Title.lit http://iterati.org/ebookTools/BookSorter/Default.aspx then used this for the add to (?P<author>[^_-]+) -?\s(?P<series>[^_0-9-])(?P<series_index>[0-9])\s-\s*(?P<title>[^_].+) ? I did see somewhere on the forum the regex you are looking for but couldn't find it

04-06-2010, 07:24 PM	#5
Spiffy Groupie Posts: 160 Karma: 416 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: Astak EZ Reader Pro AND Sony PRS-505	Hmm. Good to know that. The expression doesn't seem to work, unfortunately. But I appreciate the try. When you use that string and run the test tool inside Calibre against this book: L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz.lit The following shows in the test results: Title: L. Frank Baum - [Wizard of Oz 02] - The Marvelous Land of Oz Authors - nothing Series - nothing Series index - nothing

04-06-2010, 07:58 PM	#7
Spiffy Groupie Posts: 160 Karma: 416 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: Astak EZ Reader Pro AND Sony PRS-505	Genius work. Thank you--that's quite nifty. It even recognizes that if there's no brackets (or is it counting dashes?), there's no series, and realizes that the position of the title will be different. I hate to push, but do you know a way to address the other main issue I had? The occasional optional file type sandwiched between ROUND brackets? Like so: Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (html).zip Ideally, the best result would be to drop those file types, round brackets and everything between them, from the Title. Inevitably legit titles with round brackets could be affected, I guess, but that's a small price to pay. I won't be greedy though. You've already saved me a ton of potential headache.

04-13-2010, 06:24 PM	#15
MSWallack Right, Except When Wrong Posts: 364 Karma: 4323767 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Indianapolis Device: Kindle Oasis 3 (sometimes iPad Mini).	This is so close to what I'm trying to accomplish that I thought it was worth posting my query, too. In my case, book titles are formatted like this: Brown, Dan - The Lost Symbol [Robert Langdon #3].epub AuthorLast, AuthorFirst - Title [Series #SeriesNum].format It looks like the code that was provided is very close, but I'm not quite sure where the "delimeters" (not sure of the right term) are between the Author, Series, and Title sections of the RE. Thanks for any help you can provide.