Parsing information in directory names

[Gary_G]

Are the string function capabilities of the current version of Photo Mechanic still limited to the equivalent of the MID$() function?

Why do I ask?

As I am migrating from another DAM system, I need to do a "mass ingestion" of my archived RAW and JPG masters from my backups. I have an archive directory in which the directory names contain variable length delimited strings containing the caption and location info for the contained files. If I could parse them, I could easily populate the IPTC caption and various location fields of the ingested files.

[Kirk Baker]

Are the string function capabilities of the current version of Photo Mechanic still limited to the equivalent of the MID$() function?

Why do I ask?

As I am migrating from another DAM system, I need to do a "mass ingestion" of my archived RAW and JPG masters from my backups. I have an archive directory in which the directory names contain variable length delimited strings containing the caption and location info for the contained files. If I could parse them, I could easily populate the IPTC caption and various location fields of the ingested files.

Variables substring extraction is documented here:

http://wiki.camerabits.com/en/index.php?title=User_Manual_Flat_View#Variable_Substring_Extraction

-Kirk

[Gary_G]

Yes. I read the reference. It is essentially the equivalent of a MID$() function. It does not appear to be able to parse variable length strings based on delimiters.

[Kirk Baker]

Yes. I read the reference. It is essentially the equivalent of a MID$() function. It does not appear to be able to parse variable length strings based on delimiters.

I have never used the Basic language that has a MID$ function so I don't know if it is similar to our variables substring extraction, but you are correct in that it does not have regular expression features.

-Kirk

[Gary_G]

Thanks, Kirk. I was hoping to embed caption and location data from the name of the directory containing the images. The string is not a fixed format, so PM will not be able to handle it. However; I think I can get around this by injecting the data using ExifTool and its PERL-like regexp capabilities.

A regexp capability might be something to consider down the road. There are public domain "library" regexp implementations available.