Trying to rename with REGEX

DEVONthink
1

I am trying to use a smart rule to rename files in the database. Specifically, the scanned documents were imported with a filename like this:
CCO-2020-05-22_7.pdf

I am trying to remove the prefix such as “CCO-” at the beginning of each file. I created a REGEX rule that scans the name for:
^(cc?-)(.*)$
and replaces it with:
\2
It does not seem to do anything. I have an excellent renaming utility (NameMangler), but I know that I cannot use this to rename files after they are already in the database.
I would have posted screenshots, but this web site does not seem to want them.

2

Finally got them to upload.

Screen Shot 2021-01-26 at 6.59.56 PM
Screen Shot 2021-01-26 at 6.59.56 PM1260×610 96.1 KB

3

Screen Shot 2021-01-26 at 7.00.10 PM copy
Screen Shot 2021-01-26 at 7.00.10 PM copy1024×422 130 KB

4

Does the Smart Rule match the records in your next screen capture? It doesn’t look like it does, from what I can see on the left side there’s only one record matched.

5

There’s no need to capture the prefix since you don’t appear to be using it.

This will work though you’d have to add the proper event trigger…

image
image1250×596 88.9 KB

It yields results like so…

image

6

This worked perfectly. Thanks.
Question: Why didn’t my Regex query work? You say there is “no need to capture the prefix,” but why did the query not work?

7

The ? is a repetition operator but it only applies to the second c.
Technically you could have used ^(cc.?-)(.*)$ which would also match CC-2020-01-25_4.txt.