The regex engine is a so called perl compatible... I have not written it my self, regex is supported by the C++ standard libraries now days and that is the engine that is used. The error messages comes directly from the engine.
Im no regex expert.
But if I have a filename named "MyFile[A].txt" and in the Multi-Rename under "Search and Replace" I got "\[.\]" and Replace with "B"
and "RegEx" checkbox checked..
it works. It renames file to MyFileB.txt, I do not get an error
My post somehow got mangled and the example I set shows incompletely.(Mathias : BBCode that the forum uses and regex tags got mixed up but putting a "code" tag arround it fixes the formatting..)It should be:
\[.\] matches any single character surrounded by "[" and "]" since the brackets are escaped, for example: "[a]" and "[b]".
Which means your file named "MyFile[A].txt should be renamed to "MyFile[B].txt.
If it renames it to "MyFileB.txt" then the regex code is treating the "\" character differently to what is expected.
Whether that is bad or not I am not saying. All I am suggesting is a tooltip or other help device to show which expressions ARE used in your code.
Regex is a very peculiar tool, and those that use it probably use it in lots of different ways, in different software. If there are any differences it needs to be shown what they are to avoid any confusion.
@Crash+Burn
I think you might need to be more explicit in your examples.
If I perform a search for some files, and they are then shown in a search tab. I can select them all and start a Multi-Rename using regex. If I use "." as the Find ALL characters should be, and are, selected ready to be changed to the Replace variable.
eg.
File Search for all files that have "__V__1" in the name.
Result is a selection of files displayed in a Search tab panel with that set of characters in their name.
Now I select them all and perform a Multi-Rename on them using regex.
If I set the Find to "." and Replace to A. ALL the characters in the filename and extension are changed to A.
So the resultant files displayed below will look like:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.AAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.AAA
AA.AAAAAAA
AAAAAAA.AAAAA
Depending on how long the filenames and extensions were in the first place.
If you are expecting something else, then I suspect you might have a different set of expectations to what regex can do.
In my experience "." means ANY CHARACTER.
This all goes back to my original statement that the ACTUAL regex used inside MC should be clearly shown to avoid any such confusion.
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