what would be the best way to trim, or replace with emptiness, all characters from the left of these folders, to the point of the actual album names? i couldnt figure out how to do it with advanced rename.
thanks in advance!
Old name: [^-]+ - (.+)
New name: \1
Type: Regular expressions
thanks very much Leo, appreciated, and it worked perfect:
then i had an automated text-inserting button i found somewhere here on the site and was able to apend the folder names to:
Leo- i have a question: is there any way i could create a semi-automated way to implement the renaming you showed me above, creating a button or such? i have no understanding of regular expressions, but what you helped me with, renaming multiple folders, could be extremely useful to me. thanks again for the help
Make a button/hotkey/etc. which runs this command:
Rename PATTERN "[^-]+ - (.+)" TO "\1" REGEXP
Leo, thanks for the reply- would that string relicate the exact replace/rename pattern you helped me with above, or is it a general template for replacing whatever i might want to in future? what im really looking to do, is get the basic template down so that i could use it to rename or replace whatever i may need to as i come across it. thanks again!
It does the same thing as above.
If you want to learn about regular expressions, start here.
Leo, alrighty, i've saved the page to my system and will use it as a reference as i go- thanks alot for taking the time to help me out, much appreciated.
Leo- closely related question that goes beyond my knowledge at present:
is it possible, to make a command, that will create a folder from a highlighted filename, with all characters up till the second instance of a - (slash) and always containing the text "Album Art" ?
this would save me alot of time, as i'm working on sorting some audio files and im always having to create a sub-directory called "Album Art" and copying and pasting the folder's name from one of the music files.
also, as per your advice, i have been working on some automations on my own, please see screen 
thanks again!!
There's no super-easy way to do it, but it could be done with VBScript I guess.
I see-- slight variation on the question then-- maybe there's a way to create a folder from a selected filename's internal tags then? say somethin like create a folder based on %artist% - %album% and always have "Album Art" somewhere in the template?
so that selecting the file- Joy Division - The Peel Sessions - 08 - Sound Of Music.mp3 and running the command would create a folder Joy Division - The Peel Sessions - Album Art ?
Same answer. Making one file/folder be used for the name of another one requires scripting (unless you are moving the original file into the new folder).
thanks for reply Leo- i guess it's safe to assume that making a script is over my head at this point in time? is there any reading on it? thanks
Have a look at some of the posts in the Rename Scripting Forum. That will give you a sense of whether making a script is really over your head. On the other hand you may find that you can modify some existing code to make it do what you want.
Regards, AB
As others say, look at the examples in the forum.
When I was in the same boat – I'm still very slow at these things – I also found that it helped to look at the Opus Help file/Manual. But beyond that I went and found some web resources on regex. As this technology is widely used elsewhere, there are some good tutorials out there.
If you download and install some of the samples in the forum, you can then inspect them to see how they work.
These might be a good start:
RegExp basics: Removing characters from start/end of names
Don't just grab the "buttons", read the conversations as people chew over how best to do something. They often include useful explanations of what they are doing.