Replace term with brackets

Support
1

Hi again, I was having a problem using the $replace function. I had an existing track as:

Let It Grow (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 2nd 1974)

I want to select all tracks, Convert → Tag - Tag…

I want to change:

(San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 2nd 1974) to

(San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 22nd 1974)

But, I have a space character before the first “(“ both on what is there and what I want to replace with. The syntax seems to be perl like and I was not sure if I should double quote the strings and do I have to escape the “(“ and “)”, should I have a space after the , ?

I tried:

$replace(%title%,(San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 2nd 1974),(San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 22nd 1974))

I was not sure if putting a space after the comma affects things (or do I need quotes):

$replace(%title%, “ (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 2nd 1974)”, “ (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 22nd 1974)”)

If this were some code I were writing I would naturally put a space after the commas to help separate the parameters as I have it above.

Could you tell me what would be the full correct syntax for the above?

I had:

Let It Grow (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 2nd 1974)

And want:

Let It Grow (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 22nd 1974)

There is one space before the ( and no space after the )

Thanks for you help with this. (This was just one track, I wanted to select all and apply the same replace operation to all.)

2

To escape special characters like brackets in format strings, use the apostrophe:
$replace(%title%, ' (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 2nd 1974)', ' (San Francisco CA, Winterland Arena, February 22nd 1974)')
Yet, I wonder: if it is just " 2nd" that needs to be replaced with " 22nd" - why don't you reduce the search and replace terms to avoid the brackets ...?

3

To remove leading (or trailing) spaces you could use the $trim functions:
$trim(x,c) trims all leading and trailing whitespace from the string x. The optional second parameter c specifies the character to trim.
$trimLeft(x,c) trims all leading whitespace from the string x. The optional second parameter c specifies the character to trim.
$trimRight(x,c) trims all trailing whitespace from the string x. The optional second parameter c specifies the character to trim.

To change 2nd to 22nd I would use a simple $replace

$replace(x,y,z) returns the string x with all occurrences of string y replaced by string z. Supports multiple parameter pairs y and z.

4

Yes, I guess I could’ve done that. But I’m glad to know it’s single quotes to solve this. Thank you.

5

I have a serious problem with this post. There was no “Let It Grow” on Feb 2. The first performance of LIG in 1974 was Feb 22 (also 23rd, 24th).

:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: :high_voltage:

PS: My first Dead concert, 5-25-74 UCSB, had a Let It Grow!

6

Exactly! That’s why I needed to get this fixed asap! :wink: (Whole point of problem - change 2nd to 22nd)

7

Is there a special reason why you wanted to do this simple task with the converter instead of just editing the title field and change "2" to "22"?

8

If you read the beginning of the thread you’ll can see why. I was simply trying to use replace and there are about 25 tracks with this same error, seems like using replace would be easier/faster???