Remove texts/characters/special chars from list

[Claudio Raphael]

Hi all,

I wanted to know how do I make list 1 equal to list 2.

List 1:

Alex Rider - Stormbreaker? (USA).zip
Allied Ace Pilots? (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).zip
Alpha and Omega, The (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).zip
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (USA) (En,Fr).zip
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel [USA].zip

List 2:

Alex Rider - Stormbreaker.zip
Allied Ace Pilots.zip
Alpha and Omega The.zip
Alvin and the Chipmunks Chipwrecked.zip
Alvin and the Chipmunks The Squeakquel.zip

How to remove all “?” “,” “:” “[.]” and all “(.)” ?

Thanks for any help.

Claudio

[Terry R]

@Claudio-Raphael
It would appear some of the characters you wish to remove may also come with a space behind them (and also in front). So my regular expression (regex) includes this as an option (* means 0 or more).

So in the replace function (default Ctrl and H keys) have the search mode as “regular expression” and wrap around ticked.
Find What:\? *| *\(.+?\) *|,| *\[.+?\] *|:
Replace With:empty field <— nothing here
You can directly copy the red text above and paste into the Find field.

A brief run down of the regex. The | character acts as alternatives. That way 1 regex can search for multiple strings. As most of the characters you want to look for are special (meta-characters meaning they have special meaning) we use the \ to delimit them. That means it reduces them back to the simple character.

Give it a go, come back if you have issues. As can often happen, the example you provide may ot be a FULL representation of the real data.

Terry

[Claudio Raphael]

@Terry-R said:

? *| *(.+?) *|,| *[.+?] *|:

Thank you very much Terry-R. Worked perfectly.

I’ve tested 10 lists and everything is as I wanted it to be.

Thank you again.

Claudio