by Luuk » Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:24 pm
Im not understanding which examples to explain more precisely, so trying to descibe them all, but really the manuals are best.
The 'simple' expressions use %Number# to match "groups of text", so you can rearrange them inside of the 'Replace' box.
The more characters in 'Match', the more prejudice your matches can be, since %# matches any "group of text" until the next character in your Match.
But everything inside 'Match' must always be retyped into 'Replace' if you decide to keep it.
The others use (expression) to match (groups of text), so you can rearrange them with \1, \2, \3, etc inside of the 'Replace' box.
Since expression can be very descriptive, its often better than using 'Simple' with %#, because this only matches by "simple bordering characters".
The first example used \d{4} to say Any4Numbers, but its also more complicated, because needing "\[" to say "[", and also "\]" to say "]".
So if all the filenames is like your description, its best using the very first example without a checkmark in Simple...
^(\[.+?\] - \d{4}-\d\d-\d\d)(_.+?-)(.+)
\1\3\2
^(\[.+?\] - \d{4}-\d\d-\d\d) so \1 = Anything starting as [1-or-MoreCharactersUntil] - 4Numbers-2Numbers-2Numbers
(_.+?-) ...................... so \2 = _1-or-MoreCharactersUntil-
(.+) ......................... so \3 = 1-or-MoreCharacters
With 'Simple', if all the years started with "20", the most prejudice you can be, would be something like...
[%1] - 20%2-%3-%4_%5-%6
[%1] - 20%2-%3-%4%6_%5-
Each %# matches "1-or-more characters" beside its simple bordering characters in the match, but they cannot verify if its a number, or anything else.
So theres really no way for %2, %3, %4 to know if their "1-or-more characters" is actually "2numbers" or "4numbers" or "100characters".
But really its still good enough for most people, it just depends on how many filename formats are inside of your file-listing.
And often, your file-listing can be fixed with the 'Mask' inside of Filters(12) anyways.