Metadata Regex Search/Replace

[MontyJ]

Hola!

I am trying to do what I thought was going to be a simple search and replace in the metadata editor. Here's what I need to do:

Every once in a while I get a batch of books that seem to have a lot of the author initials run together and it becomes tedious to have to manually go through all the entries and manually edit them. So I need to look for connected uppercase letters in the authors field and separate them with a space. Example:

Smith, John XY, or
Smith, XY John, or
John XY Smith, or
Smith, XY

The "XY" needs to come out "X Y", ie a space inserted.

But NOT affect something like Smith, John Xy, or the other arrangements of that.

I have tried:

\b([A-Z]){2}\b
And that finds the right occurrence, but can't capture it so I can insert a space.

\b([A-Z])([A-Z])\b
But that fails on the "Xy" occurrence when I use the replacement of:

\1 \2
Note the space in between.

I have tried a half dozen other short and lengthy regex's I found, but none work for this situation..

Ideas?

Thanks!

[theducks]

Look at the Quality check Plugin
It has bot a detect and a FIX section for this issue. Yor preset your desired format.
It does many other things. Check it out. It is FREE

[MontyJ]

Originally Posted by theducks

Look at the Quality check Plugin
It has bot a detect and a FIX section for this issue. Yor preset your desired format.
It does many other things. Check it out. It is FREE

Thanks! I do use that plugin...very helpful. I had not tried it on this problem, tho, so learned something new!

It will indeed find all the XY initial entries so I can then put them into a virtual library to work on, but it won't actually make the change, so it is still a manual process at that point. Am I missing something the Quality Check plugin can do that will fix the Initials problem?

If I can get the Metadata Editor regex to work, it will easily scan the entire library for those XY occurrences and take care of them in fewer steps.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by MontyJ

[. . .] so it is still a manual process at that point. Am I missing something the Quality Check plugin can do that will fix the Initials problem?

try this one ==>>

BR

[MontyJ]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

try this one ==>> Attachment 157441

BR

Well, I certainly missed that one! And it works. Fantastic plugin!!

And Thanks!!