Batch-Renaming Movies using Regex

Posted by Nate Mara on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Nate Mara
Published on 2013-10-29T03:30:15Z Indexed on 2013/10/29 3:59 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 648

Filed under:

regex

|

batch-rename

So, I've been trying to rename some movie files using regular expressions, but so far I have been only marginally successful. The goal is to parse files like this:

2001.A.Space.Odyssey.1968.720p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-LiNG.mkv

And rename them Like this:

2001 A Space Odyssey (1968).mkv

I created the pattern: ^(.+).(\d{4}).+.(mp4|avi|mkv)$

With the output: \1 (\2).\3

Now, this works perfectly fine when I have movies with one-word titles, but when there is more than one word separated by a period, the regex fails to grab anything.

What am I doing wrong here?

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about regex

Find multiple regex in each line and skip result if one of the regex doesn't match

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a list of variables: variables = ['VariableA', 'VariableB','VariableC'] which I'm going to search for, line by line ifile = open("temp.txt",'r') d = {} match = zeros(len(variables)) for line in ifile: emptyCells=0 for i in range(len(variables)): regex = r'('+variables[i]+r')[:|=|\(](-… >>> More
OWASP Regex Repository: Is this regex correct?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was looking at the regular expression for validating various data types from the (OWASP Regex Repository). One of the regular expressions in there is called safetext and looks like: ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s.\-]+$ My first question is: Is this regular expression correct? complementary question If this… >>> More
Make a Perl-style regex interpreter behave like a basic or extended regex interpreter

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a tool to help students learn regular expressions. I will probably be writing it in Java. The idea is this: the student types in a regular expression and the tool shows which parts of a text will get matched by the regex. Simple enough. But I want to support several different regex… >>> More
JS regex isn't matching, even thought it works with a regex tester

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm writing a piece of client-side javascript code that takes a function and finds the derivative of it, however, the regex that's supposed to match with the power rule fails to work in the context of the javascript program, even though it sucessfully matches when it's used with an independent regex… >>> More
c# RegEx with "|"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to be able to check for a pattern with | in them. For example an expression like d*|*t should return true for a string like "dtest|test". I'm no regex hero so I just tried a couple of things, like: Regex Pattern = new Regex("s*\|*d"); //unable to build because of single backslash Regex Pattern… >>> More

Related posts about batch-rename

Trying to do a batch rename, can't figure out the proper RegEx

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I'm trying to rename my movie collection. All of the files are currently named using dots instead of spaces, i.e. Men.in.Black.avi. I want to replace all of the dots with spaces which isn't terribly difficult, but I need to preserve the last dot for the file extension, i.e. .avi, .mp4, .ogg, etc. My… >>> More
Batch rename folders?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
This is probably a super-simple already solved task, but: I have a series of folders containing eBooks in various formats. They have the folder name format: \Lastname, Firstname (n books)\ I want to rename each of the folders to be simply \Firstname Lastname\ which I'm guessing can be done… >>> More
How to batch rename files using bash

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I know there are lots of such questions, but I couldn't find one (or a combination of several), which describes the things I want to do. I think I need to use regular expressions, but I am not very good with that. I use zsh. I have a folder with files, which I want to rename: I want the files challenge1… >>> More
How can I use GPRename's regex feature to reinsert the matched-group into the 'replace'?

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I've been using GPRename to batch-rename files; this is rather more efficient than individually correcting each file, but still seems to be less efficient than it might be, primarily because either I don't understand the regex syntax used, or because the regex implementation is incomplete1 Given… >>> More
Batch rename file extensions, including subdirectories

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm renaming empty file extensions with this command: rename *. *.bla However, I have a folder with hundreds of such subfolders, and this command requires me to manually navigate to each subfolder and run it. Is there a command that I can run from just one upper level folder that will include… >>> More