Remove text between () and [] based on condition in Python?

Question

I'm trying to remove the characters between the parentheses and brackets based on the length of characters inside the parentheses and brackets.

Using this:

def remove_text_inside_brackets(text, brackets="()[]"):
    count = [0] * (len(brackets) // 2) # count open/close brackets
    saved_chars = []
    for character in text:
        for i, b in enumerate(brackets):
            if character == b: # found bracket
                kind, is_close = divmod(i, 2)
                count[kind] += (-1)**is_close # `+1`: open, `-1`: close
                if count[kind] < 0: # unbalanced bracket
                    count[kind] = 0  # keep it
                else:  # found bracket to remove
                    break
        else: # character is not a [balanced] bracket
            if not any(count): # outside brackets
                saved_chars.append(character)
    return ''.join(saved_chars)

I'm able to remove the characters between the parentheses and brackets, but I cannot figure out how to remove the characters based on the length of characters inside.

I wanted to remove characters between the parentheses and brackets if the length <=4 with parentheses and brackets if they are >4 remove only parentheses and brackets. Sample Text:

text = "This is a sentence. (RMVE) (Once a day) [twice a day] [RMV]"

Output:

print(remove_text_inside_brackets(text))

This is a sentence. 

Desired Output:

This is a sentence. Once a day twice a day

Answer 1

You can use a simple regex with re.sub and a function as replacement to check the length of the match:

import re
out = re.sub('\(.*?\)|\[.*?\]',
             lambda m: '' if len(m.group())<=(4+2) else m.group()[1:-1],
             text)

Output:

'This is a sentence.  Once a day twice a day '

This give you the logic for more complex checks, in which case you might want to define a named function rather than a lambda