Remove everything in parentheses java using regex

Question

I\'ve used the following regex to try to remove parentheses and everything within them in a string called name.

name.replaceAll(\"\\\\(.*\\\\)\"         


        

Answer 1

To get around the .* removing everything in between two sets of parentheses you can try :

name = name.replaceAll("\\(?.*?\\)", "");

Answer 2

Strings are immutable. You have to do this:

name = name.replaceAll("\\(.*\\)", "");

Edit: Also, since the .* is greedy, it will kill as much as it can. So "(abc)something(def)" will be turned into "".

Answer 3

String.replaceAll() doesn't edit the original string, but returns the new one. So you need to do:

name = name.replaceAll("\\(.*\\)", "");

Answer 4

I'm using this function:

public static String remove_parenthesis(String input_string, String parenthesis_symbol){
    // removing parenthesis and everything inside them, works for (),[] and {}
    if(parenthesis_symbol.contains("[]")){
        return input_string.replaceAll("\\s*\\[[^\\]]*\\]\\s*", " ");
    }else if(parenthesis_symbol.contains("{}")){
        return input_string.replaceAll("\\s*\\{[^\\}]*\\}\\s*", " ");
    }else{
        return input_string.replaceAll("\\s*\\([^\\)]*\\)\\s*", " ");
    }
}

You can call it like this:

remove_parenthesis(g, "[]");
remove_parenthesis(g, "{}");
remove_parenthesis(g, "()");

Answer 5

As mentionend by by Jelvis, ".*" selects everything and converts "(ab) ok (cd)" to ""

The version below works in these cases "(ab) ok (cd)" -> "ok", by selecting everything except the closing parenthesis and removing the whitespaces.

test = test.replaceAll("\\s*\\([^\\)]*\\)\\s*", " ");

Answer 6

In Kotlin we must use toRegex.

val newName = name.replace("\\(?.*?\\)".toRegex(), "");