# Help removing specific characters

**URL:** <https://community.mp3tag.de/t/help-removing-specific-characters/16023>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [August 17, 2014, 4:55pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/help-removing-specific-characters/16023 "2014-08-17T16:55:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![taran2ula](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@taran2ula](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/taran2ula)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 4:55pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/help-removing-specific-characters/16023/1 "2014-08-17T16:55:45Z")

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Hello friends and good day to you. I am pretty new at using mp3tag but I am learning fast. I have some questions I hope someone can help me with'  
First, I would like to remove double dashes from my file name and replace them with single dash. EG: My file name looks like this:Accents - - I Give My Heart To You  
I would like to remove the double dashes between the artist name and the title so it looks like this instead: Accents - I Give My Heart To You . Is there a script to  
remove the double dashes and spaces and only input a space dash space? Secondly, I have other files that look sort of like this: 0 3 Wilbert Harrison - Goodbye Kansas City  
or 0 3. Wilbert Harrison - Goodbye Kansas City I would like to remove the weird numbers or characters before the artist name and replace them with just the artist name space  
dash space the title. Is there a script that will remove leading characters from a filename no matter how many characters there are? I know I can use replace with regular expression  
and ^.{the number representing how many leading characters} and this will eliminate the leading characters but can be time consuming if the number of leading characters changes  
frequently. Lastly, some files have ( or ) at any given point in the filename. Is there a way to eliminate a specific character from the filename so if I want to remove a ( or maybe a  
& or ^, I can just change the variable to eliminate this character? Many thanks to the mp3 tag community. This is without a doubt the most awesome program to date. Peace people.

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**Author:** ![ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/ohrenkino/32/4843_2.png) [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/help-removing-specific-characters/16023/2 "2014-08-17T17:10:14Z")

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All would be very simple if you filled the tags and then generate filenames with the contents of the fields.  
The reason: while a filename is just an amorphous string of characters, the fields structure this information.  
You can extract the information with the function Convert\>Filename-Tag and a mask like:  
%artist% - - %title%

To replace "- - " with " - " use an action of the type Replace for \_FILENAME.

To remove leading numbers use an action of the type "Replace with regular expression"  
Search string: ^\d \d.  
Replace string:  
(leave that empty)

The general idea remains: fill the tags first and don't fiddle about with just the filenames. These could be generated much quicker with the function "Convert\>Tag-Filename".

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**Author:** ![system](https://community.mp3tag.de/uploads/default/original/2X/c/ce7035d426cb755a7916793326d23b465222a407.png) [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2026, 12:25pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/help-removing-specific-characters/16023/3 "2026-02-09T12:25:12Z")

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Closed on February 9, 2026, 12:25pm UTC