I’m trying to rename a bunch of files by removing all parenthetical from the file name EXCEPT if they contain a specific word.

For instance, say these are my files:

  • File 1 (Boop) (Ver 1).file
  • File 1 (Beep) (Ver 2).file
  • File 2 (Soup).file
  • Another File (Seep).file
  • Yet Another (Ver 5).file

I want to KEEP any parenthetical with “Ver” and a number, but I want the rest gone.

So it should look like:

  • File 1 (Ver 1).file
  • File 1 (Ver 2).file
  • File 2.file
  • Another File.file
  • Yet Another (Ver 5).file

I can write \(.*\) for Find and leave Replace blank to get rid of anything parenthetical, and it works great.

So I tried \((?!Ver).*\) and a bunch of alternatives, but it gives me the same result of just removing all parentheticals (even the ones I want). I have tried lookaheads, lookbehinds, and a bunch of syntax tweaks, but I always either end up with no parentheticals or all of them.

Any suggestions?

  • Max@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think you want something like \s*\(((?!ver\s\d).)*\)\s*

    See regexr.com/7jbvk

    Basically this consumes all characters between parentheticals with whitespace unless the next character set in the parentheticals is ver followed by a number. Now this uses a negative lookahead which might not be supported by the engine that krename is using. You can also explicitly construct the group to not match, but that’s rather painful, see here