Regex first character Alphabet only

Support
1

If have used Regex before but I am stumbling over trying to determine %artist% that begin with alphabet character. I am trying to batch convert tag to filename.

I have several artists that begin with numeric or non-alphabet characters:

.38 Special
+44
3 Doors Down
(Crosses)

I would like these to to move to a folder named 0-9 and those starting with alphabet character to move to A...Z fodlers based on their first letter.

Here is what I came up with but everything moves to 0-9

$if((((NOT %artist% MATCHES ^\w) OR (%artist% MATCHES ^\d))),0-9\\%artist%,$left(%artistsort%,1)\\%artist%))

I have also trie the following:

$if(($or(($not(%artist% MATCHES ^[a-zA-Z])),(%artist% MATCHES ^\d))),"0-9\"%artist%,$left(%artistsort%,1)\\%artist%))

$if((%artist% MATCHES ^\W),0-9,$left(%artistsort%,1)))

Any suggestions?

2

Please don't forget:
Where do you want to move special characters like Д or Э or Ø or 菅?
Should they go to 0-9 too?

And there some more like
!distain
[product]
.hiDDen tiMe
!!!

There are even some characters who seems to be between A-Z (example: ВЕЧЕ or РАРОГЪ), but the B and P are not the usual one...

Sorry, not really helpful. Just my 2 cents.

3

You mixed Filter syntax with script functions, that's not supported.

Try this:
$iflonger($regexp($left(%artist%,1),'^[.+(\d]',0-9),2,0-9,$left(%artistsort%,1))

4
$ifgreater($len(%ARTIST%),$len($regexp(%ARTIST%,'^[^[:alpha:]]',)),'0-9',$upper($left(%ARTIST%,1)))

... or ...

$iflonger(%ARTIST%,$len($regexp(%ARTIST%,'^[^[:alpha:]]',)),'0-9',$upper($left(%ARTIST%,1)))

DD.20140910.0900.CEST

5

sorry if this is posted somewhere else but I wasn't able to find anywhere. If I could ask for Step by step instructions for newbies on how to; move artist folders into alphabetical folders - have tried this command but I don't know how to run it in mp3tag

$iflonger(%ARTIST%,$len($regexp(%ARTIST%,'^[^[:alpha:]]',)),'0-9',$upper($left(%ARTIST%,1)))

Current folder/file structure:
%artists% \ %album% (%year%)\%artist% - %title%.ext

I would like mp3tag to create a folder from first letter of %artist% then move all artists matching the same first letter to the new folder (keeping the subfolder structures).

New folder structure:
1 \ %artists% \ %album% (%year%) \ %artist% - %title%.ext
2 \ %artists% \ %album% (%year%) \ %artist% - %title%.ext
a \ %artists% \ %album% (%year%) \ %artist% - %title%.ext
b \ %artists% \ %album% (%year%) \ %artist% - %title%.ext

thank you in advance

6

In general: if you want to rename a folder, then use an action of the type "Format value" for _DIRECTORY.
BUT: as you do not want to rename just the current folder but also the parent folder, you will be left with empty folders after the process.
Only the current folder level can be renamed.
Also, I would apply a full path like
d:\music\1\ %artists% \ %album% (%year%) \ %artist% - %title%.ext
in order to get the same starting point.
(instead of the "1" insert the regular expression)
And finally, the field ARTISTS is no standard field - there are ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST. Are you sure that you have that field filled in in every track if you reference that in your string?

See also here: