Writing to Metadata from Filename Substrings Errors

[billyadams]

I've got over 1,000 images that I need to write some metadata to that is pulled from the actual filenames and I'm having some issues with either syntax or the regex match I'm pulling.

The files are all named with this pattern: [LastName]-[FirstName]-[MiddleName(s)]-[10 Digit Number].jpg where the middle name could include more than one word separated by a hyphen.

My goal is to get this information written, in part, to two different metadata fields.

Field Name: OriginalTransmissionReference
Target Data: [10 Digit Number]

Field Name: ObjectName
Target Data: [FirstName] [MiddleName(s)] [LastName]


When trying to just pull the 10 digit number on file Last-First-Middle-1010101010.jpg, my command is this:
exiftool -overwrite_original '-originaltransmissionreference<${filename;s/-(\d{10})/}' DIR

But what happens is that the entire filename is then written to the target field, and I get a warning about it being truncated, "exceeds length limit".

I've double-checked my regex in standard PERL and it returns correctly as the 10-digit-number, but can't seem to get it to work in exiftool.

Running on macOS 15.2, Terminal, Bash, exiftool 13.19

[greybeard]

exiftool -overwrite_original '-originaltransmissionreference<${filename;s/.*-(\d{10}).*/$1/}'  '-objectname<${filename;s/(.*)-(\d{10}).*/$1/}'

[billyadams]

Thank you! That first one is so helpful, but the second one is not quite what I was looking for. I'm needing to re-order the elements from the original file name for the Object Name.

Is there a way to combine three capture groups in a new order?

Something like this?
'-objectname{<$filename;s/^([^-]+)-([^-]+)-(.+)-.*/$2/ + " " + /$1/ + " " + /$3/}'

Or is this a job for substring?

[StarGeek]

I haven't tested it but it would be more like
'-objectname{<$filename;s/^([^-]+)-([^-]+)-(.+)-.*/$2 $1 $3/}'

Note that IPTC IIM tags all have a limit on how long they can be (see the IPTC tags page). You can override that limit by adding the -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) option. A better solution, IMO, would be to instead use the corresponding XMP tags (IPTC Core/Ext) which do not have character limits. See the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard.

[billyadams]

Ooh! I figured it out after some trial and error.
exiftool -overwrite_original '-objectname<${filename;s/^([^-]+)-([^-]+)-(.+)-.*/$2 $3 $1/}'

Yeah, I'm limited to the fields I can use because the Digital Asset Manager we are using to import these into has a limited/outdated set of fields it references for mapping embedded data into platform fields. So I'm having to make do with using "incorrect" fields for the data I need to get up.

Thank you so much for helping this newbie out! I'll be using this stuff more and more now.