MRT: need help with RegEx: rename to remove this but keep that?

[wanderer]

Original Subject was: RegEx help

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I need some help with regex. TC help or http://regexpstudio.com/en/regexp_syntax.html were not much help, so...

I have some files in several folders, which are of format "blah1 (blah2) blah3 (blah4)". I would like to remove "(blah2) " from all of them. In every folder, blah2 differs, so i'm using MRT to mass-rename all of them. "blah4" i want to keep. This is usually 1-3 chars long while "blah2" is always 5+.

I tried using "\(.\)" as regex (which i thought would do the trick), but it was not helpful. It would remove some instances of "blah4" (the ones with 1 char). "\(*\)" was also not helpful.

Could someone please give me an example at first on how to successfully escape the parenthesis and then to tell MRT that i would like to replace only text within parenthesis with length greater than a specific number of chars?

[wanderer]

OK, never mind, i got it. I used " \(.{5,}?\)". It's confusing though. Depending on the characters you put inside the escaped parenthesis, regex may decide NOT to escape the parenthesis and doesn't replace them. Makes you think you're doing something wrong...

[Stefan2]

FROM:
bl1 (bl2) blah3 (blah4).txt
blah1 (blah2) blah3 (blah4).txt
blaha1 (blaha2) blah3 (blah4).txt
blahab1 (blahab2) blah3 (blah4).txt
blahabc1 (blahab c2) blah3 (blah4).txt

TO:
bl1 blah3 (blah4).txt
blah1 blah3 (blah4).txt
blaha1 blah3 (blah4).txt
blahab1 blah3 (blah4).txt
blahabc1 blah3 (blah4).txt

MRT:
Search: ^(.+?)\s\(.+?\)
Replace: $1
[X]RegEx


Explanation:
^ >>> work on start of string.
(.+?) >>> match one-or-more of any sign non-greedy till next expression and save in capture group (...) number one.
\s\(.+?\) >>> match a space and a literal '(' plus match one-or-more of any sign non-greedy till next ')'.
Replace by capture group (...) number one>>> '$1'.

Rest of string is untouched in TC regex engine.

RegEx Syntax:
. >>> any sign
+ >>> match one-or-more of the expression right before
* >>> match zero-or-more of the expression right before
(...) >>> store in a capture group
? >>> match non-greedy instead of 'the last possible match'

 

[wanderer]

Hey Stefan2, thanks for the info. I'll try those out when i get on a pc.