Swapping words in a file name

Hi David Lee,

Thanks for helping with my last query. I'm still struggling with using regular expressions (sorry no programming background), so hope you can help.

I have files with longish names. There is no set number of words in the file name, it can vary.

Scenario 1: I want to swap the first 3 words:

aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff
aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff ggg

to

bbb ccc aaa ddd eee fff
bbb ccc aaa ddd eee fff ggg

Scenario 2: I want to swap the first 2 words:

aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff
aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff ggg

to

bbb aaa ccc ddd eee fff
bbb aaa ccc ddd eee fff ggg

Thanks in advance!

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Regular expressions are tricky to get the hang of but generally fairly straightforward once you start to understand the logic. Start with Kim's simple introduction at www.advancedrenamer.com/user_guide/regular_expresions but for more complex information you will need to search the Internet - the Wikipedia article is a good place to start.

This problem is a little more tricky as "greedy" quantifiers will attempt to eat your entire string!

The following RegEx will do what you want (do not include the quotes)...

Problem 1: "^(\S+) (\S+ \S+)"
Problem 2: "^(\S+) (\S+)"

In each case use the replace string "\2 \1"

Explanation (prob 1)...

^ = start matching at the beginning of the filename

(\S+) = match as many non-whitespace characters as possible and save as sub-pattern group \1

<space> = match one space but don't save it

(\S+ \S+) = match two strings of non-whitespace chars separated by a space and save as \2

The replace string \2 \1 simply reverses the order of the two sub-pattern matches, separated by a space.

As I said, this is a bit more complex than Kim's simple examples and you will probably notice that the meta-character "\S" does not appear in Kim's very basic list (a similar meta-character "\s" is the opposite of "\S" and will match any whitespace character).

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Reply to #2:

Thanks very much again. I did read Kim's introduction but was still not sure.

Glad you pointed out the meta-character \S.

I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

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Reply to #2:

Many thanks for your answer. Advanced Renamer's regex is harder to search on the internet than others. Your answer came at just the right time for me too.

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