Question

I have a String in Java that holds data in this format:

String x = "xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx (xxx)";

How can I set the value of that string to just be the characters in the brackets, without including the brackets? (Note that the character sizes will vary in each instance).

Answer 1

The one-line solution is to use String.replaceAll() and the appropriate regex that captures the whole input (effectively replacing the whole input), but also captures (non-greedily) the part you want as group 1, then puts back just that group:

String part = x.replaceAll(".*\\((.*?)\\).*", "$1"); 

FYI, the double back-slashes in the regex String is a single slash in regex, which then escapes the literal brackets in the regex

Here’s some test code:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String x = "xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx (xxx)";
    String part = x.replaceAll(".*\\((.*)\\).*", "$1");
    System.out.println(part);
}

Output:

xxx