Question

I was trying to replace this (' with (\' and ') with \') My attempts were few as I’m not comfortable with RegExp.

What I tried was myText.replace(/\(\'/g, "(\')"); and myText.replace(/\'\)/g, "\')");

Answer 1

The problem is not your regex but your replacement. You need to escape the backslash, otherwise it (unnecessarily) escapes the ':

myText = myText.replace(/\('/g, "(\\'");
myText = myText.replace(/'\)/g, "\\')");

With some slightly more advanced techniques (namely a capturing group and a lookahead) you can combine these into one regex:

myText = myText.replace(/(\()'|'(?=\))/g, "$1\\'");

The regex matches either (' or ' if it is followed by ) (without actually matching that). At the same time we “capture” the ( if it is there. The $1 in the replacement string puts the ( back in place if it was captured, and then simply writes out \'. There is no need to write the ) back. Because we used a lookahead, it was never part of the match.