Remove text between () and []

Question

I have a very long string of text with () and [] in it. I'm trying to remove the characters between the parentheses and brackets but I cannot figure out how.

The list is similar to this:

x = "This is a sentence. (once a day) [twice a day]" 

This list isn't what I'm working with but is very similar and a lot shorter.

Answer 1

You can use re.sub function.

>>> import re  >>> x = "This is a sentence. (once a day) [twice a day]" >>> re.sub("([\(\[]).*?([\)\]])", "\g<1>\g<2>", x) 'This is a sentence. () []' 

If you want to remove the [] and the () you can use this code:

>>> import re  >>> x = "This is a sentence. (once a day) [twice a day]" >>> re.sub("[\(\[].*?[\)\]]", "", x) 'This is a sentence.  ' 

Important: This code will not work with nested symbols

Explanation

The first regex groups ( or [ into group 1 (by surrounding it with parentheses) and ) or ] into group 2, matching these groups and all characters that come in between them. After matching, the matched portion is substituted with groups 1 and 2, leaving the final string with nothing inside the brackets. The second regex is self explanatory from this -> match everything and substitute with the empty string.

-- modified from comment by Ajay Thomas