136

Would it be possible to change

Hello, this is Mike (example)

to

Hello, this is Mike

using JavaScript with Regex?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
298 
"Hello, this is Mike (example)".replace(/ *\([^)]*\) */g, "");

Result:

"Hello, this is Mike"
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5
  • 19
    note that .replace() does not change the string itself, it only returns a new string. So you still have to set the variable to be equal to what you changed.
    – Ayub
    Commented Oct 30, 2013 at 18:50
  • 3
    Where the parentheses are in the middle of a string, the regex above will remove all the whitespace around them. This is probably not good.
    – Nigel Johnson
    Commented Nov 13, 2017 at 11:42
  • 1
    How to do inverse of this? I want (example) only
    – carte
    Commented Jan 23, 2020 at 7:26
  • 1
    Doesn't work if you have something like: It's a bit messed (up (right)) but it happens :)
    – TigrouMeow
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 2:15
  • Not a robust solution, it works on console but not within script tag for some reason tried it already many times. The other answer work just fine.
    – Bitwise DEVS
    Commented Jun 26, 2021 at 10:04
37 
var str = "Hello, this is Mike (example)";

alert(str.replace(/\s*\(.*?\)\s*/g, ''));

That'll also replace excess whitespace before and after the parentheses.

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  • what's the point of question mark?
    – Human programmer
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 16:04
  • .*? is a non-greedy version of .* (match everything). In short, it matches upto the next thing it can match, in this case the closing parentheses. Google "non-greedy regex" for more details.
    – svenema
    Commented Feb 2, 2023 at 18:53
20

Try / \([\s\S]*?\)/g

Where

(space) matches the character (space) literally

\( matches the character ( literally

[\s\S] matches any character (\s matches any whitespace character and \S matches any non-whitespace character)

*? matches between zero and unlimited times

\) matches the character ) literally

g matches globally

Code Example:

var str = "Hello, this is Mike (example)";
str = str.replace(/ \([\s\S]*?\)/g, '');
console.log(str);
.as-console-wrapper {top: 0}

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  • 1
    what's the point of "[\s\S]" when you can just use a dot, meaning any character?
    – Human programmer
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 16:05
8

If you need to remove text inside nested parentheses, too, then:

        var prevStr;
        do {
            prevStr = str;
            str = str.replace(/\([^\)\(]*\)/, "");
        } while (prevStr != str);
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  • Didn't need that to get rid of the brackets but didn't want to get rid of whitespace before paranetheses like most solutions are and this maintains it so thanks
    – Alan Macdonald
    Commented Sep 1, 2022 at 12:45
3

I found this version most suitable for all cases. It doesn't remove all whitespaces.

For example "a (test) b" -> "a b"

"Hello, this is Mike (example)".replace(/ *\([^)]*\) */g, " ").trim(); "Hello, this is (example) Mike ".replace(/ *\([^)]*\) */g, " ").trim();

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