identify special character in folder name

hi

I'm trying to find out what this character is which looks like a longer dash –

I found it whilst inspecting my music folders. A normal dash looks like this - and an em dash created by alt 0151 looks like this —

Now I have to confess to being woefully (blissfully) ignorant about the world of dashes in windows until I found this one, which is midway in length between the short dash found between my zero key and my equals key and what I believe is the longest em dash.

I'd like to be able to find other examples of this dash in my directories and files to be able to eliminate them but copy and paste into a dos window seems to not work as I get a control u.

any hints and tips?

Why do you use a dos window if mp3tag could rename directories for you?
If you follow a certain pattern in naming your folders and files, then you could look for folders and files that do not match that pattern (with a filter) - and rename them which eliminates any reason why they wouldn't fit.

In addition: there is a windows-own program that shows the character table. See the start menu and "accessories" for that.

Thanks for your tips.

Found the accessories character table but when I copy paste the dash into find the character it does not find it.

I have a folder structure like:

Folders A to Z then
Folder A contains artist names in capitals
Artist Name folders contain Artist - Album

if there's a way to use mp3tag to detect folders that don't follow this pattern, how do I do this?

So I can use filter like %_directory% HAS "–" to look for the one special character and that's a good start but is there a regex to look for a directory which does not contain a normal dash - then I could find any other character that looks like my short dash but isn't. In fact if single space dash single space eg " - " isn't found I need to see it...

According to unicodelookup.com my special character is:

– en dash 020023 8211 0x2013 –

Just looking at trying a regex of something like %-directory% MATCHES " [^-] "

The correct syntax would be:
NOT %_directory% HAS -
or if you look at the whole path as _DIRECTORY only considers the last folder before the filename:
NOT %_path% HAS -
of if you need the blanks as well:
NOT %_directory% HAS " - "

The following Formatstring checks all tag-fields in a file at once, ...
you may create a column in Mp3tag list view ... or use it otherwise ...

Formatstring: $ifgreater($len($regexp($list($char(13),$char(27),$char(10)),'\r.+?\e|\n',)),$len($regexp($regexp($list($char(13),$char(27),$char(10)),'\r.+?\e|\n',),'[\x{2010}\x{2011}\x{2012}\x{2013}\x{2014}\x{2015}\x{2043}\x{2212}\x{2500}\x{2E3A}\x{2E3B}]',)),'Dash ambiguity detected.','Dash ambiguity not detected.')

|‐|‑|‒|–|—|―|⁃|−|─|⸺|⸻|

U+2010 HYPHEN
U+2011 NON-BREAKING HYPHEN
U+2012 FIGURE DASH
U+2013 EN DASH
U+2014 EM DASH
U+2015 HORIZONTAL BAR
U+2043 HYPHEN BULLET
U+2212 MINUS SIGN
U+2500 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL
U+2E3A TWO-EM DASH
U+2E3B THREE-EM DASH

See also ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

DD.20150106.2317.CET

Just tried these out on my known example of the folder name with en dash (alt 0150) rather than dash and the two with directory work ok in detecting the en dash but the path does not detect it. I copy/pasted them into the filter area.

Thanks for this. I created a column called dashtest and pasted the format string into the value then loaded up the folder with the en dash in the path name but the field displays Dash ambiguity not detected. Have I used your code correctly?

The previously given code works for all the inner tag-fields.
If you have the need to check the filepathname or just one tag-field, then you have to adapt the formula.
Formatstring: $ifgreater($len(%_path%),$len($regexp(%_path%,'[\x{2010}\x{2011}\x{2012}\x{2013}\x{2014}\x{2015}\x{2043}\x{2212}\x{2500}\x{2E3A}\x{2E3B}]',)),'Dash ambiguity detected.','Dash ambiguity not detected.')
... or ...
Formatstring: $iflonger(%_path%,$len($regexp(%_path%,'[\x{2010}\x{2011}\x{2012}\x{2013}\x{2014}\x{2015}\x{2043}\x{2212}\x{2500}\x{2E3A}\x{2E3B}]',)),'Dash ambiguity detected.','Dash ambiguity not detected.')

DD.20150107.1033.CET