Regular Expression Help Needed

dloyer4 · 07-25-2010, 07:45 PM

Importing books and I need to write a regular expression to handle the three file-name formats they're in. The file name formats are as follows:

1. author - title.type
2. author - title - series.type
3. author - title - series - series_index.type

Each category is separated by a hyphen with a space on either side. The regex needs to be able to handle the occasional hyphenated word in the title, but those hyphens are not preceded or followed by a space.

So far, I have the following regex:
(?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>[^-]+) - (?P<series>[^-]+) - (?P<series_index>[^.]+)?

This works fine for case 3...though it seems to put a .0 at the end of the series number - i.e. book #3 in a series is given the series_index of 3.0 when I test the file name, but I don't know if this is a problem with my regex, or if this is simply how Calibre displays that number.

For case 1, The title is listed as "author - title" and the rest of the fields are unknown, and for case 2, the title is listed as "author - title - series" and the rest of the fields are listed as unknown.

Any one able to give me a hand with this?

Thanks,
Dennis

speakingtohe · 07-25-2010, 11:37 PM

I do not know much about regular expressions although I generally can get them figured out if I have to.
Seems that you are beating your head against the wall with the series stuff.
I would just worry about the author-title and do a bulk download of metatdata for the series. (with the overwrite author title unchecked )
This will give you the 'official' series info etc. for 90 % of your books
A bit painful if you have already put in your own shortened series names, but must be done eventually IMO.

07-25-2010, 07:45 PM	#1
dloyer4 Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: none	Regular Expression Help Needed Importing books and I need to write a regular expression to handle the three file-name formats they're in. The file name formats are as follows: 1. author - title.type 2. author - title - series.type 3. author - title - series - series_index.type Each category is separated by a hyphen with a space on either side. The regex needs to be able to handle the occasional hyphenated word in the title, but those hyphens are not preceded or followed by a space. So far, I have the following regex: (?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>[^-]+) - (?P<series>[^-]+) - (?P<series_index>[^.]+)? This works fine for case 3...though it seems to put a .0 at the end of the series number - i.e. book #3 in a series is given the series_index of 3.0 when I test the file name, but I don't know if this is a problem with my regex, or if this is simply how Calibre displays that number. For case 1, The title is listed as "author - title" and the rest of the fields are unknown, and for case 2, the title is listed as "author - title - series" and the rest of the fields are listed as unknown. Any one able to give me a hand with this? Thanks, Dennis

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07-25-2010, 11:37 PM	#2
speakingtohe Wizard Posts: 4,812 Karma: 26912940 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: sony PRS-T1 and T3, Kobo Mini and Aura HD, Tablet	I do not know much about regular expressions although I generally can get them figured out if I have to. Seems that you are beating your head against the wall with the series stuff. I would just worry about the author-title and do a bulk download of metatdata for the series. (with the overwrite author title unchecked ) This will give you the 'official' series info etc. for 90 % of your books A bit painful if you have already put in your own shortened series names, but must be done eventually IMO.

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