This is an example of the folder name that I'm working with:
Intersound ISCD 112 - Straight Off (1990)
I'm trying to isolate the year without parentheses and copy it to the year field through tag - tag. Using $cutleft(%_directory%, 36) deletes everything up to 1990, but what do I do to get rid of the ending parenthesis? I thought about using $cutright as well, but that just repeats the directory name and I have to get rid of it all over again from the other side and it became a huge mess.
Can $cutleft and $cutright be used effectively in the same string?
If you want to get the YEAR from the folder name, you could try Convert>Filename-Tag with
Mask: %dummy%(%year%)\%dummy%
If you insist on the use of Convert>Tag-Tag for YEAR then I would use as
Format string: $regexp(%_directory%,.*\((\d+)\),$1)
If you have used
successfully you could stack that with $replace($cutleft(%_directory%, 36),')',)
which replaces the closing bracket with nothing.
I would still use the regular expression as that takes any length of preceeding text in front of the digits in brackets and not just a fixed 36 characters.
Yes - as @ohrenkino already explained above
or with something like $cutRight($cutLeft(%_directory%,36),1)
BUT:
If you use $cutleft and $cutright you can handle only 1 specific case at once.
In your case you get the number at the 37. position (because you would cut away the 36 leading characters and in addition the trailing bracket). Intersound ISCD 112 - Straight Off (1990) 123456789012345678901234567890123456
This would not work for Intersound ISCD 12 - Straight Off (1990)
and not work for Intersound ISCD 112 - Straight Off two (1990)
If you want to use such a format string to extract the year from different positions, please use one of the mentioned Converters.