# Remove parenthetical phrase from filename?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [August 17, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201 "2005-08-17T17:35:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Praxis](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Praxis)
#### Post date: [August 17, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/1 "2005-08-17T17:35:55Z")
This is a great program, and one of a handfull of programs keeping me booting Windows on a regular basis. It beats Linux Easytag with a hammer.
Anyway, I'm wondering what the best way to remove a phrase that is in parenthesis from a Filename might be.
I make my filename out of various tag elements like:
%artist% - $num(%track%,2) - %title% - %album%
However the Title often has some additional information in paranthesis that I don't want to be part of the Filename for two reasons:
1. I'm trying to keep file names less than 64 characters so I can make CDs to play on my portable MP3 CD player.
2. I understand CD-Rs do not appreciate parenthesis in any case.
But I would like to keep the parenthetical information in the track Title so it displays when I play the song (my player displays Artist - Title).
Otherwise I'd just do a Filename-\>Tag conversion and send the parenthetical expression to the Comment field, then rename the file with Tag-\>Filename.
I have an inelegant way of dealing with this now. I simply manually edit the filenames in cases where not many files in an album have parenthetical clauses. In other cases I run a Replace action that converts "(" in to "- ", then I can wipe the expression from the Filename by running a Filename-\>Filename conversion using something like this:
%1 - %2 - %3 - %4 - %5
%1 - %2 - %3 - %5
I searched through the English Support forum, but didn't find any suggestions. Leider, ich spreche Deutsch wie ein Eingeboren - aus Madagascar.
Thanks,
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### Author:  [@Sebastian\_Mares](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sebastian_Mares)
#### Post date: [August 17, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/2 "2005-08-17T17:56:51Z")
Do a RegEx replace on the filename using \s\*(.\*) as match and nothing as replace.
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### Author:  [@Praxis](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Praxis)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/3 "2005-08-18T02:05:03Z")
Thanks, Sebastian, that did the trick. Now I just have to figure out why so I can learn a bit more about regular expressions. 😳
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### Author:  [@Sebastian\_Mares](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sebastian_Mares)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2005, 5:41am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/4 "2005-08-18T05:41:08Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Thanks, Sebastian, that did the trick. Now I just have to figure out why so I can learn a bit more about regular expressions. 😳
>
> \<{POST\_SNAPBACK}\>
\s\* matches any number of spaces.
( matches a bracket (the charecter has to be escaped or otherwise MP3Tag thinks that it's the beginning of a group).
.\* matches any number of characters
) matches a bracket.
So basically, we are looking for spaces folowed by a bracket followed by characters followed by an ending bracket. All this is replaced by nothing.
---
### Author:  [@Praxis](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Praxis)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2005, 3:15pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/5 "2005-08-18T15:15:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \s\* matches any number of spaces.
> ( matches a bracket (the charecter has to be escaped or otherwise MP3Tag thinks that it's the beginning of a group).
> .\* matches any number of characters
> ) matches a bracket.
>
> So basically, we are looking for spaces folowed by a bracket followed by characters followed by an ending bracket. All this is replaced by nothing.
>
> \<{POST\_SNAPBACK}\>
Thanks again, a book on the wish list should be Amazon.deing its way to MP3Tag as I type (seemed easier than messing with PayPal, since I don't have an account). Hopefully I navigated the German menus properly.
I fooled around with the RegEx stuff before I posted, but didn't quite get the syntax right on my own. I didn't use the '\s\*' to find blank spaces and tried both '_' & '_.\*' between the escaped paranthesis brackets, but it didn't seem to work properly.
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### Author:  [@sheepdisease](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/sheepdisease)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 9:55pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/6 "2018-07-16T21:55:23Z")
I can't get this code to work as described. When testing, it tried to delete the filename. It does not removed backets and anything contained inside, despite creating a replace with regular expression using the code supplied. Why is this?
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2018, 5:39am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/7 "2018-07-17T05:39:42Z")
Please note that in old threads (like this one) sometimes some of the characters are swallowed up by the forum display parser.
> [@Sebastian\_Mares](#):
>
> \s\*(.\*)
should read:
`\s*\(.*\)`
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### Author:  [@sheepdisease](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/sheepdisease)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2018, 5:30pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/8 "2018-07-17T17:30:44Z")
Thank you, I did not realise! Kind of concerning..
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2018, 1:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/9 "2018-07-29T13:47:41Z")
6 posts were split to a new topic: [Remove parenthetical "feat." from filename](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-feat-from-filename/42498)
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-parenthetical-phrase-from-filename/2201/16 "2026-02-09T12:19:26Z")