Question

^(\w+) - (\d+). (.+) \((\d+)\) \[(\w+)]

I created the following regex to match a pattern of directories I use to store my music collection in.

The general pattern for the directory structure is like this

artist - albumnr. albumname (year) [quality]

I am trying to match into groups the artist, albumname, year and quality. However, I would like to clean up the albumname and remove anything that be inside parentheses or any string that would appear after a dash.

e.g.

• albumname -blahblah (remastered) – would just return albumname in the 3rd group match
• albumname (remastered) – would still just return albumname
• albumname – the regex should still be able to return album name even if there is no – or backets within the result.

Answer 1

This one will match albumname -blahblah (remastered) and albumname (remastered) but not albumname (remastered) -blahblah :

^(\w+) - (\d+)\. (.+?) ?(?:-\w+)? ?(?:\(.*?\))? \((\d+)\) \[(\w+)\]

Test here

If you also want to match against albumname (remastered) -blahblah

^(\w+) - (\d+)\. (.+?) ?(?:-\w+)? ?(?:\(.*?\))? ?(?:-\w+)? \((\d+)\) \[(\w+)\]