Regular Expression Help, ABFR9

Here is a Perl and a Sed RE that get the job done when your string is piped into them. Tested on Mavericks.

perl -lne 'print qq($1 $2) if /^(......).+_(.+\.)/'

sed -En 's/^(.{6}).+_(.+\.)jpg/\1 \2/p'

Result:

ABCDEF Hello there.

The Better Finder Rename tool may have its own REGEX interpretation that is different from standard Sed and Perl. It may want a Python, or Ruby RE dialect. Don't know. Since I do not have the Better Finder Rename tool, I cannot test what sequence will work on it.

The Better Finder Rename tool appears to be following the Perl PCRE regular expression syntax. Since I do not have the Better Finder Rename tool, I cannot test further here.

Here is a link to their Regular Expression manual for A Better Finder Rename Tool. They indicate that they are following the Perl PCRE syntax. Here is the Perldoc Regular Expression documentation. Here is a visual regex tool. Select PCRE as your flavor in this online tool.

Try just this part of the Perl RE:

'/^(......).+_(.+\.)/\1 \2/p'

Hello

Given input:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYX_Hello there.jpg

do you really want a) string with period at end but extension:

ABCDEF Hello there.

or b) string without peroid and extension:

ABCDEF Hello there

or c) string with extension:

ABCDEF Hello there.jpg

?

According to the following page regarding regular expression in A Better Finder Rename 7:

http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/Manual_RegularExpressionsPrimer.h tml

find and replace expressions below would work:

For a),

matching regular expression:

^(......).*_(.+?)(?:(\.)([^.]+)|$)

substitution expression:

\1 \2\3

For b),

matching regular expression:

^(......).*_(.+?)(?:\.[^.]+|$)

substitution expression:

\1 \2

For c),

matching regular expression:

^(......).*_(.+)

substitution expression:

\1 \2

* Matching patterns are tested to work with Perl but not with A Better Finder Rename, for I don't use the latter.

Hope this may help,

H