How to add punctuation between TITLE 1st & 2nd words?

Support
1

How do I bulk edit to insert a colon in between the first and second words of the TITLE field?

My tracks' TITLE field currently includes the Composer last name as the first word, followed by the track title itself (Example: "Beethoven Moonlight Sonata").

I thought I could just Replace with Expression to convert the pattern "%1 %2" to "%1: %2" but that didn't work because I don't really know what I'm doing with regular expressions lol

Thank you in advance!

2

Try an action of the type "Format value" or Convert>Tag-Tag for TITLE
Format string: $regexp(%title%,(.*?) (.*),$1: $2)

3

A quick word of warning:
Every regular expression has one drawback. It cannot recognise the actual content.
As long as the first word in your title field is "Beethoven", "Bach" or "Schubert", it will work fine. However, be aware that a regular expression will always insert a colon after the first word, even if it is not the name of a real composer.
Example TITLE:
My Moonlight Sonata -> My: Moonlight Sonata
Moonlight Sonata -> Moonlight: Sonata

I suggest using a filter first to ensure that the name of the composer, whether it's Beethoven or someone else, is the first word in your title. Or you can sort by the TITLE column.

4

Indeed. It will also not work if suddenly the composer's whole name is featured, e.g "Ludwig van Beehoven".
So it may be worthwhile to consider to use a simple "Replace" and replace "Beethoven" with "Beethoven:".
And another thought: I would think that this name would best be stored either in ALBUMARTIST or COMPOSER or ARTIST - but not in the TITLE...

5

It will work fine with inserting a colon after the first word.

However, the entire system of identifying a composer solely by their surname has its limitations. There is no better example of this than the name "Bach." There are ten well-known composers with this name, and over forty in total.

To simplify the use of abbreviated forms for classical composers in certain situations (such as when naming files or folders), I have adopted the practice of populating the COMPOSERSORT tag field. In this field, I generally use only the surname, though I include the first name as well whenever ambiguity might arise.
Composersort:
Beethoven
Chopin
Bach, Sebastian
Bach, Johann Christian

6

Could you explain why you don't use COMPOSERSORT for all composer names in the same way? For example:
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Chopin, Fryderyk or Chopin, Frédéric François

7

I'ts because use it with Mp3tag only to create folder structures, filenames or in exports. In these cases I am interested to use a name as short as possible without risk of confusion.

8

I see, thank you for your explanation.