Remove characters based on (First N, Last N) from field.

General Discussion
1

My Genre field is set like so:

%genre%: Hip-Hop; East Coast Hip-Hop
%genre%: Electronic; Drum & Bass

this was because I wanted to use MusicBee's auto-EQ feature which was based off 'grouping' tags (Electronic, Hip-Hop, Rock, etc). Now that i'm going back to Foobar2000 I didn't like how it's displayed and I made up my mind to revert back to good ole' (1) genre label like so:

%genre%: East Coast Hip-Hop
%genre%: Drum & Bass

=============================

Now there are (2) ways to delete them:

#1. [First N, Last N] from which the number 'N' removed the relative amount of characters.
I got this method from the utility 'Bulk Renamer'

#2 [Character Specific] delete the respective characters (most likely grouped) within %genre% including separators & spaces.

--info--
nice read for music library organization for genre
http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-manag...sic-genre-list/

2

Make sure to see only those files which you want to manipulate ...
Set Filter: GENRE MATCHES "^.+?;.+?$"
... or ...
Set Filter: GENRE HAS "; "

Begin Action Group Test2014#20140723.SetGenreFromItem2

Action #1
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: GENRE
Formatstring: $replace(%GENRE%,'; ','\\')

Action #2
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: GENRE
Formatstring: $meta(GENRE,1)

End Action Group Test2014#20140723.SetGenreFromItem2 (2 Actions)

From: GENRE = Hip-Hop; East Coast Hip-Hop

To: GENRE = East Coast Hip-Hop

... or ...

Action "Format value"
Field: GENRE
Formatstring: $cutLeft(%GENRE%,$add($strstr(%GENRE%,'; '),1))
... or ...
Formatstring: $ifgreater($strstr(%GENRE%,'; '),0,$cutLeft(%GENRE%,$add($strstr(%GENRE%,'; '),1)),%GENRE%)

DD.20140723.1935.CEST, DD.20140724.1329.CEST
3

I prefer this one as it's simply a shorter method. BUT, is there a way to notify the genre tag if it doesn't have anything before "'; " (yes, including that space) then don't apply this command. Otherwise it removes one character from beginning N like so:

East Coast Hip-Hop > ast Coast Hip-Hop
Drum & Bass > rum & Bass

:huh:

4

What about an action of the type "Replace with regular expression" for GENRE
Search string: .*;
(with a blank at the end)
Replace String:
(leave that empty).
This should delete that part of a string that is in front of a "; ".