Regular Expression Help

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I think it's an error to keep the comma in the lastname.

I made a simple fix and submitted it as Ticket #4620. It splits the author's name at a comma, if there is one (with swap checkbox selected) and otherwise splits at the first space instead of the last space to deal with middle names and initials.

[rogue_ronin]

Nice!

Hope it's accepted.

m a r

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by rogue_ronin

Nice!
Hope it's accepted.

According to bug tracker it will be in the next release. It's a trivial change, and, I suspect it takes Kovid longer to look at the proposed change and make sure I haven't buggered up his code than to do it himself. Nonetheless, it's nice to feel like I've made a tiny contribution. Plus, it does address a problem that was bothering me.

Now I'm off to read some more on Python. There's this other tiny issue that bugs me ...

[melvin]

Hi there,

I've just started to use Calibre and so far, I think I like it. Many thanks to Kovind for the wonderful work.

My pdf ebook/document collection was formatted as title - author - publisher - date - series.pdf.

I failed to locate any help in the forum on how to import the publisher and date into the metadata. I was wondering if any person can help on this matter. Thanks.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by melvin

I failed to locate any help in the forum on how to import the publisher and date into the metadata.

If they work, they'd be like this:
publisher: ?P<publisher>
published date: ?P<pubdate>
entered date: ?P<timestamp>

I've never tried any of those, and they aren't in the regex test, so they may not work. If they don't, put in an enhancement request.

[vinco]

I need to come up with a regex to detect and remove page numbers from the bottom of PDF pages to convert to Epub for nook usage. The page numbers translate over as bolded, with a paragraph break after them. The HTML code I'd like to remove is (page numbers indicated below by ###)

<b>Page ###</b></p><p>

Thanks for the help.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by vinco

I need to come up with a regex to detect and remove page numbers from the bottom of PDF pages to convert to Epub for nook usage. The page numbers translate over as bolded, with a paragraph break after them. The HTML code I'd like to remove is (page numbers indicated below by ###)

<b>Page ###</b></p><p>

Thanks for the help.

Try this:

<b>Page /d+.*<p>

[vinco]

<b>Page /d+.*<p>

Does not seem to work. A straight

<b>Page 1</b></p><p>

seems to work, but obviously only catches the first page. Apologies for my complete lack of experience with RegEx's

[tonyx3]

It's a bit messier than Starson17's solution, but if that's not working, try this:

<b>Page [0-9]{1,3}</b></p><p>

Basically, just copy an example of the part you want to match, then replace the actual digits with [0-9] (or /d, like Starson used, but you said it didn't work), and then use the squiggly brackets to set the minimum and maximum number of digits in a row (I assumed no more than 999 pages).

But Starson17's regex should have matched.. make sure all the tags surrounding the page number are correct. Maybe copy/paste an actual example, and then replace the middle of it with the regex, to be sure you didn't miss a space or something.

[darkmonk]

<b>Page [0-9]{1,4}</b></p><p>

Should remove it. Of course, this may not work from calibre. I use sigil to remove those sorts of things.

[kovidgoyal]

@vinco

you need a backslash not a forward slash in

<b>Page /d+.*<p>

[vinco]

Still confused.

<b>Page  \d+</b></p><p>

ended up working perfectly in the test, but when I set that as the footer to remove in calibre, the converted epub still contains the page numbers.

I'm converting from a PDF, to EPUB.

A sample of the XML generated from the PDF is below.

     Since nothing material was destroyed when the Eddorians were forced into the next plane of existence, their historical records also have become available. Those records-folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy, resistant indefinitely even to Eddore's noxious atmosphere agree with those of the Arisians upon this point. Immediately before the Coalescence began there was one, and only <b>Page  1</b></p><p>
one, planetary solar system in the Second Galaxy; and, until the advent of Eddore, the Second Galaxy was entirely devoid of intelligent life. </p><p>

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

you need a backslash not a forward slash in

<b>Page /d+.*<p>

[chaley]

Originally Posted by vinco

<b>Page  \d+</b></p><p>

ended up working perfectly in the test, but when I set that as the footer to remove in calibre, the converted epub still contains the page numbers.

With apologies in advance for asking, did you remember to check the 'Remove footer' checkbox?

In your example, there are two spaces between 'Page' and '1'. If that is an accurate copy, then you need to match more than 1 space there. Try

<b>Page +\d+</b></p><p>

If that doesn't work, then it wouldn't surprise me if there are newlines buried in the middle of the the text you are trying to match. Try

<b>\s*Page +\d+\s*</b>\s*</p>\s*<p>

[rocketgranny]

Guys,
Name Changer is a great tool for fixing filenames in a directory before you import into Calibre. Works on a Mac.