RegEx for title - author - series?

[mattam]

Have tried to convert other Regular Expressions to work when adding books into Calibre, but no luck.

Books in series are like this one: "To The King A Daughter - Andre Norton & Sasha Miller - Oak, Yew, Ash & Rowan 01.mobi".

Books without a series are like this: "Between the Dark - Algis Budrys.mobi".

Any ideas as to how to make series optional at the end of the string? Each time I try moving pieces of another RegEx around -- e.g. kiwidude's sample in QuickRef plug-in -- it only works for books with a series, but for those not in a series.

Have tried the Python Regular Expression documents, but don't seem to be able to find a solution.

Any help appreciated!

[louwin]

It's 23:30 so just a quick answer....

You put a (....)?* around the "series" extraction logic.

Quickly....

(?P<author>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)( - (?P<series>.+))?*

Sorry, it's a while since I have done anything with Regex and it's late but that should get you on the right track....

Also sorry, title and author swapped around by your question....

[mattam]

Thanks for the effort, louwin, but it didn't work.
I tried it on several examples, like the one above or "Pilgrimage - Zenna Henderson - People 1.mobi" and "Holding Wonder - Zenna Henderson.mobi". It didn't work.
I had previously tried playing with parentheses, question marks, etc., but to no avail.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by mattam

Thanks for the effort, louwin, but it didn't work.
I tried it on several examples, like the one above or "Pilgrimage - Zenna Henderson - People 1.mobi" and "Holding Wonder - Zenna Henderson.mobi". It didn't work.
I had previously tried playing with parentheses, question marks, etc., but to no avail.

The following work for your examples. I didn't write them so don't ask me to explain them.

For Title - Author - Series I use this regex

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

For Title - Author I use this regex

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

I use the Quick Preferences plugin to quickly switch between them as needed.

I currently have 5 different regex I switch between as needed.

[louwin]

Again quickly (off to play cards with a couple of mates)

My Regex which worked.... Haven't played with it in 4 months though

It does things in different sequence but it worked....

It is more complex as it also handled series_index

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

Both series and series_index are optional but Author and Title are mandatory....

My first answer had an asterisk on the end that was not required?

Good luck....

[mattam]

Thanks, dwanthy, but your RegEx only works, if the series information is present. If a book isn't part of a series, it fails.

Same with your expression louwin. I removed the asterisk, but no luck.

Thanks for trying, guys! I have a ton of old books in format above to load in.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by mattam

Thanks, dwanthy, but your RegEx only works, if the series information is present. If a book isn't part of a series, it fails.

I knew that was the case. That is why I gave you two regex one with series and one without series and suggested you use the Quick Preferences Plugin to switch between the two as needed. I also have regex for

Author - Series - Title

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

Title - Series - Author and

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

Series - Tile - Author too

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

in my Quick preferences plugin. It is a simple matter of quickly switching between regex before adding any group of books as needed.

[JustForFun]

How about this:

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

It matches both given examples in the test of the preferences dialog. It also matches a series without a series index.

I'm not sure why, but using an '?' at the end of the expression to make the series part optional didn't work for me, so the expression tests for an optional series or the end of the string. Additionally the expression tries to avoid to add a space to the end of the series name if there is a series index present.

EDIT:
With a more recent calibre version using '?' for the optional series seems to work. A somewhat refined version which doesn't add a space at the end of the title:

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

Interestingly authors seems to be processed further as it does not have a space at the end which the expression would leave there.

[mattam]

May your favourite chocolate be ever in abundance!

Thanks, JustForFun! Worked as advertised!

[dpayment]

I'm not sure if this is related to this topic, but I believe it is.

I have a HUGE (50K+) collection of ebooks in a variety of formats. Many of them are probably duplicates, but locating the duplicates can be a very slow, tedious process, even with good bulk renaming tools and such. Most of my family and several friends are readers who use ereaders, and I'd like to use Calibre's content server to allow them access to my library. I'd even be open to allowing the same library access to this forum's members.

Almost everyone out there seems to have some unique format they prefer for listing their books in their libraries. Some prefer: Author First name, last name - title, series. Others prefer: title - author first name, last name, series, or, author last name, first name - title, etc. Heck, despite the file extension indicating the file type, some people actually put things like "(epub)" or "(mobi)" into the titles. Because of this, I have to handraulically rename large portions of my collection to try to see where the duplicates are, and which formats I want to keep. I've been working on it sporadically for the past several years, and I'm still only working in the first half dozen letters of the alphabet. In addition, there are all the special characters people use, dashes, colons, semi-colons, brackets, braces, etc.

Personally, I prefer the old fashioned way of cataloging: Author Last Name, Author First Name, Title, Series. What I'd like is a script (or scripts) that would allow me to look at the different elements in the filenames and swap/delete them appropriately, in bulk. Even if I have to go through the file listings a page or two at a time and select individual titles, it would be quicker than what I'm doing now.

Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer or software whiz, so I don't understand the Regex conventions well enough to do this myself. Any help would be really appreciated,
Thanks,
Dan

[BetterRed]

@dpayment - have you tried Find Duplicates plugin with fuzzy logic

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=131017

Preferences->Plugins->User Interface Action->Find Duplicates

BR