cannot figure out, please help: bulk metadata swap numeric mo/yr in title w/ regex

[anoukaimee]

I apologize in advance because I think this is a super simple question, but I've been searching for hours and, for the life of me, I cannot seem to figure it out.

I have many periodicals for which I'd like to standardize the date in the title. I already went through and "manually" changed the months from alpha to numeric (e.g., "Jan" to "01"). I now realize that I'd like to also have the year first, followed by the month.

So, for instance, I have a bunch of Gardeners' World Magazines, that are currently inputted as:

Gardeners' World Magazine, [MONTH] [4 DIGIT YEAR]
e.g., "Gardeners' World Magazine, 01 2011" (that is, Jan 2011)

I would like to format them as:

Gardeners' World Magazine, [4 DIGIT YEAR]/[MONTH]
e.g., "Gardeners' World Magazine, 2011/01"

BUT I can't figure d**n regex out (even though I find it totally fascinating), specifically how to replace a pattern. I figured out that "\d{2} \d{4}" expresses the date as it is now formatted, which is great, BUT I can't figure out how to transform it to the desired pattern. Please see pic for clarification.

Thanks!

[theducks]

your search look good
it is your replace
you want to use the CAPTURED VALUE
(\d{2}) is the first capture
(\d{4}) is the second capture

Replace wants to USE those, just flipped

\2 /\1

[anoukaimee]

Originally Posted by theducks

your search look good
it is your replace
you want to use the CAPTURED VALUE
(\d{2}) is the first capture
(\d{4}) is the second capture

Replace wants to USE those, just flipped

\2 /\1

Thank you for your help! I guess it is the notion of "capturing" that is confusing for me. How do you indicate that a string is what needs to be modified, rather than just "identifying" it? is it the parens as you have it:

(\d{2}) is the first capture
(\d{4}) is the second capture

And if so, what is the syntax to show that those should be inverted?

I ask because I tried plugging in just

(d{2}) (d{4}) for search AND
(d{4}) (d{2}) for test

and it's not changing anything (in the "your test" field, at least).

Really appreciate your help!

[theducks]

I showed you the PROPER replace for flipping

[anoukaimee]

Originally Posted by theducks

I showed you the PROPER replace for flipping

Ok; I'm sorry, I still don't understand. I appreciate you want to help ppl who do their legwork, but I feel that I have. Sorry and thanks anyway.

[BetterRed]

Yes, the parentheses in the search expression denote capture groups, they're notionally numbered from left to right, and they are referenced in replace expressions with a '\' (sometimes known as backslash or slosh) and number i.e. \1, \2, \3 etc

So, put \2/\1 into the Replace with: box and you'll have yyyy/mm.

BR