Search and Replace Help

[Squidly21]

I want to delete a string in at the end of each page on a PDF that I'm converting to a MOBI. I looked at the help guide at http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/regexp.html but I still can't get it to work. I want to delete the string "(1 of 224)18/12/2003 23:07:53" The page number changes and the string doesn't include the quotation marks. I would really appreciate the help!

[theducks]

You will also find that the timestamp changes

(\(\d+ of 224\)18/12/2003 23:\d+:\d+")

the second and third \d+ take minute and second into consideration

[eschwartz]

instead of the page number you will want to use "\d{1,3}" -- this means match a digit (\d) one to three times. You could also use the plus instead, "\d+" to match one or more times, I just like being specific.

Quote from the manual: (http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/rege...-to-make-sense)

Yes, the expression Page [0-9]+ of 423 would match every page number in that book!

You WILL need to match tags as well: (http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/regexp.html#conversions)

Let’s begin with the conversion settings, which is really neat. In the Search and Replace part, you can input a regexp (short for regular expression) that describes the string that will be replaced during the conversion. The neat part is the wizard. Click on the wizard staff and you get a preview of what calibre “sees” during the conversion process. Scroll down to the string you want to remove, select and copy it, paste it into the regexp field on top of the window. If there are variable parts, like page numbers or so, use sets and quantifiers to cover those, and while you’re at it, remember to escape special characters, if there are some. Hit the button labeled Test and calibre highlights the parts it would replace were you to use the regexp. Once you’re satisfied, hit OK and convert. Be careful if your conversion source has tags like this example:

(shamelessly ripped out of this thread). You’d have to remove some of the tags as well. In this example, I’d recommend beginning with the tag <b class="calibre2">, now you have to end with the corresponding closing tag (opening tags are <tag>, closing tags are </tag>), which is simply the next </b> in this case. (Refer to a good HTML manual or ask in the forum if you are unclear on this point.) The opening tag can be described using <b.*?>, the closing tag using </b>, thus we could remove everything between those tags using <b.*?>.*?</b>. But using this expression would be a bad idea, because it removes everything enclosed by <b>- tags (which, by the way, render the enclosed text in bold print), and it’s a fair bet that we’ll remove portions of the book in this way. Instead, include the beginning of the enclosed string as well, making the regular expression <b.*?>\s*Generated\s+by\s+ABC\s+Amber\s+LIT.*?</b> The \s with quantifiers are included here instead of explicitly using the spaces as seen in the string to catch any variations of the string that might occur. Remember to check what calibre will remove to make sure you don’t remove any portions you want to keep if you test a new expression. If you only check one occurrence, you might miss a mismatch somewhere else in the text. Also note that should you accidentally remove more or fewer tags than you actually wanted to, calibre tries to repair the damaged code after doing the removal.