# Replacing string in artist filed
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/replacing-string-in-artist-filed/15135
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [October 23, 2013, 7:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/replacing-string-in-artist-filed/15135 "2013-10-23T19:10:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@chinni](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chinni)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2013, 7:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/replacing-string-in-artist-filed/15135/1 "2013-10-23T19:10:40Z")
I have some of artist fields with just first name, I need to replace it with firstname lastname. For example
I need to replace
Benny
with
Benny Dayal
However, if there is already Benny Dayal, it is replacing it with two Benny words. Is there anyway, I can create action to replace only Benny when there is no Dayal?
Thanks,
---
### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2013, 3:26am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/replacing-string-in-artist-filed/15135/2 "2013-10-24T03:26:56Z")
Try a "Replace with regular expression" action instead of the simple replace action.
Enter as search string:
^Benny$
This assumes that only "Benny" can be found in the artist field.
You can keep your action if you filter your files first with
%artist% IS Benny
---
### Author:  [@chinni](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chinni)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/replacing-string-in-artist-filed/15135/3 "2013-10-24T12:51:30Z")
Thanks for the post. This will help for cases where I have single artist. Some times, I have multiple artists separated by comma.
I am thinking to run one more action group as last one which will search for "Benny Benny" and replace with just one Benny. I have copule of them.
As I fix one problem with action, I am get side effects of the fix. However, I have lot of progress. I understood that some times I need to do in certain order. I am cleaning up all the mistakes I did while entering meta data.