Regex to remove header from PDF

[neonbible]

I have been reading through a few posts about using Regex to remove headers and footers.

I have successfully managed to remove page numbers and static strings. But the particular PDF I am using use the chapter title as the header. So this is going to change a lot.

How do I specify a regex expression to match a phrase/string?

[ldolse]

try this:
<br>\s*(title1|title2|title3|title\s+with\s+spaces )\s*<br> - changing title to whatever your chapters are.

You can also add <hr>\s* or \s*<hr> to the beginning or end (depending on whether it's header or footer), to more accurately tie it just to the page headers. If you tie it to the <hr> tag you might be able to get away with something like this:

<br>\s*(\w+\s*)+\s*<br>\s*<hr>

Use the test function with some of those examples to see if you can get what you need.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/ is the best place to read up on how to use regex.

edit - here's a sample regex I used for a file which also had chapter title headers:

((Castello\s|The\s(Phleg|nun|night|prince\sof\smus|garden|secret\spalac)|Epilogu|Prefac|Four\scarnival|Amalf|La\sSiren|Marriage\sto|Montevergin|Spaccanapol|A\sstiletto|Gesualdo\sC)[^<]+<br>\s*)?(\d|[xvi])+<br>\s*(The\sD\s*e\s*v\s*i\s*l\s*[^<]+<br>)?\s*((Bh|27)[^<]+<br>\s*){4,4}\s*<hr>\s*<A name=\d+></a>

I believe in this case it was a footer, <A name=\d+></a> also shows up on every page break, so it's another way to tie the regex to the header/footer by including that in the pattern.

[neonbible]

Thanks. I take it | means OR, so I just type out all the chapter headings.

[itimpi]

Yes - the | means or - but is a regex operator and is part of the regular expression allowing the one expression to match one of a number of strings

[ldolse]

Correct, and as itimpi noted, you need to use it correctly in the context of a regex, which primarily means surrounding all the OR'd items with parentheses for that particular operator.

Make sure to include the <br> tags in your pattern as well (at a minimum) so that you don't delete words from the book text.