Adding books with series in the filename

[genright]

Can anyone please help with a regex for adding books that may optionally have a series? I have one that gets a trailing title correctly most of the tme, but series get lumped with the author name.

eg "bob smith - a long series 01 - my title.txt"

I tried variations on the below but that fails, and google doesnt seem to help.

(?P<author>.+)( - (?P<series> <series_index>))? - (?P<title>[^_]+)

Cheers for any suggestions

[genright]

Another example, this works but breaks for files that do not have a series such as "bob smith - another title.txt". Also, how can I grab the series index as well?

(?P<author>.+) - (?P<series>.+)? - (?P<title>[^_]+)

[penguinaka]

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

this one removes all brackets around the series and anything in brackets in the title section doesn't get imported imported


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

this one removes brackets around the series section but leaves things in brackets in the title so you get version information imported with the title


*note - i find it useful to do some file clean up prior to import with a bulk renaming software.

There are 2 that are very good with Flash Renamer being my favorite the other is called Bulk Rename Utility. In these you can enter regex commands in the find and replace to clean up files or wildcards if you don't know how to use regex.

Two other tools I use is ExtractNow which auto extract & deletes archives after extraction in folders and folders of folders without having to manually go there and Opus which replaces windows explorer with a comander style split screen and a view screen so you can inspect whats in any type of file without opening them it also allows you to make customized regex, find & replace rename and other stuff as buttons and place them on the menu bar.

Some of the button I have created and added to the bar on Opus... for example I have a swap author and title button; swap ln, fn button; swap author, series, title button (in any combination); replace by with -; swap ln,fn & ln,fn button; and trim all double spaces and trailing space; and some others.

I use flash renamer first because you can string together a bunch of commands to do in a batch command to run against your files in bulk. The any minor quick fixes i do with buttons from opus when i reinspect to make sure everything is like i like it. Cheers i hope that helps.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by genright

(?P<author>.+)( - (?P<series> <series_index>))? - (?P<title>[^_]+)

The problem is the series field. You're using named backreferences wrong, try taking a look at the tutorial.
You'll probably want to use something like

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

or something similar.

[genright]

Originally Posted by penguinaka

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

this one removes brackets around the series section but leaves things in brackets in the title so you get version information imported with the title

Nice one! This wors especailly well with the cases I have, many thanks. I'm still working through how it functions, but likely would never have tried so many nested expresions else. Your other suggestions are also duly noted. I've also used krename from the kde app suite in the past.

@Manichean: Thanks for the tip, I had read through that doc but didnt feel the enlightement yet. In hindsight my first attempts were indeed so flawed

Really appreciate the quick feedback guys. Caliber is awesome

[penguinaka]

Thanks glad it helps. I took a look at krename because i'm always after a more powerful tool but from what little i tested it i find that flash renamer covers a lot more ground and seems to be easier to use.