Question

I have the following javascript regex…

.replace("/^(a-zA-Z\-)/gi", '');

It isn’t complete… in fact it’s wrong. Essentially what I need to do is take a string like “XJ FC-X35 (1492)” and remove the () and it’s contents and the whitespace before the parenthesis.

Answer 1

replace(/^(.*?)\s?\(([^)]+)\)$/gi, "$1$2")

Takes XJ FC-X35 (1492) and returns XJ FC-X351492.

Remove the $2 to turn XJ FC-X35 (1492) into XJ FC-X35, if that’s what you wanted instead.

Long explanation

^   // From the start of the string
(   // Capture a group ($1)
.*? // That contains 0 or more elements (non-greedy)
)   // Finish group $1
\s? // Followed by 0 or 1 whitespace characters
\(  // Followed by a "("
(   // Capture a group ($2)
[   // That contains any characters in the following set
^)  // Not a ")"
]+  // One or more times
)   // Finish group $2
\)$ // Followed by a ")" followed by the end of the string.