Remove everything in java parentheses with regex

Question

I used the following regular expression to try to remove the parentheses and everything inside them in a string named name .

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

For some reason this leaves the name unchanged. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Lines are immutable. You must do this:

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

Edit: Also, since .* Is greedy, it will kill as much as possible. So, "(abc)(def)" will be converted to "" .

Answer 2

As Jelvis mentions, ". *" Selects everything and converts "(ab) ok (cd)" to ""

The next version works in these cases "(ab) ok (cd)" → "ok", selecting everything except the closing brackets and removing the spaces.

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

Answer 3

String.replaceAll() does not edit the original string, but returns a new one. So you need to do:

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

Answer 4

If you read the Javadoc for String.replaceAll() , you will notice that it indicates that the resulting string is the return value.

In general, String immutable in Java; they never change meaning.

Answer 5

I am 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, "()");