Help with adding books please

[stustaff]

Ok I am trying to add my books which I have in my own file and folder system to calibre.

I can add them however I think I can do better!

eg at the moment the author and title are ALWAYS the wrong way round, and the series data gets messed up.

I can see why calibre does this but cant work out how to change it...

So here is how my books are named there are unfortunately a couple of variables..

Author - Series - Series2 - Booktitle

Series options are not always there so sometimes will just be Author - BookTitle and sometimes it will be Author - Series - Title

The reason a series2 text may be there is if say a book is part of a series within a series eg the death novels within the discworld would be Terry Pratchett - Discworld - Death 01 - Mort

here are a few examples
David Gemmell - Drenai 01 - Druss 01 - Legend
Dean R. koontz - Velocity
Eoin Coifer - Artemis Fowl 01 - Artemis fowl

I have tried within Calibre preferences to alter the 'regular expression' under add books but dont really understand it and pressing test does nothing?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[stustaff]

Ok I had a look around and found this

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

which does pretty much everything I want But the title is getting messed up

eg
Eoin Coifer - Artemis Fowl 01 - Artemis fowl

gives the book a title of 'artemis' everything else is spot on.

hmm puzzled?

and Eoin Coifer - Artemis Fowl 02 - The Artic Incident
gives me a title of 'The Artic'

[kovidgoyal]

replace the series bit with

(?P<series>[^_0-9 -]*)

[stustaff]

Thanks Kovid all sorted.

[stustaff]

spoke too soon

these style are causing me problems

STAR TREK - TNG - 01 - Ghost Ship_624

which works ok but Id like to be able to remove the '_624'

also
STAR TREK - DS9 - 01 - Emissary_512

gives me a series entry of 'DS [9]' rather than series 'DS9 [1]

Im happy with 'Star Trek' as the author as I dont have the author in the filename

Also I have another series that looks like 'Star Wars - _New Jedi Order 01_ - Vector Prime (by R A Salvatore)_937'
gives me a title of
'_New Jedi Order 01_ - Vector Prime (by R A Salvatore)_937' and star wars as the author.

I'd like in this style 'star wars' as a tag and it to pull the author from between the (by **)

[stustaff]

Is there an idiots guide to this stuff somewhere so i can read up to try and fix the above?

Thanks

[kovidgoyal]

Not quite an idiots guide, I'm afraid. Basically, you have to learn to use regular expressions. Here's a guide to regular expressions

http://docs.python.org/library/re.html

[stustaff]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Not quite an idiots guide, I'm afraid. Basically, you have to learn to use regular expressions. Here's a guide to regular expressions

http://docs.python.org/library/re.html

Ok complicated!?



I have had a go though but havent had chance to test.

what does anyone think of the chances that this would work for the following file name,types.

STAR TREK - DS9 - 01 - Emissary_512

STAR TREK - TNG - 01 - Ghost Ship_624

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

[kovidgoyal]

You can test it using the calibre preferences dialog. Just enter the expression and the filename and click test

[stustaff]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You can test it using the calibre preferences dialog. Just enter the expression and the filename and click test

Sorry Kovid but that doesnt work as i explained in first post

When I press test nothing happens?

I am using OSX on a mac mini core duo- latest version of calibre.

[kovidgoyal]

Ah it's probably broken. Fix will be in next release.

[kovidgoyal]

Just tried it, it works. Note that you test filename must have an extension

So

test.epub will work

test

wont

[stustaff]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Just tried it, it works. Note that you test filename must have an extension

So

test.epub will work

test

wont

That will be why!

Thanks so much