Regular expression for detecting round brackets

Question

I have a large array with string. Now, I need to use the string in the array to form patterns. However for the string with round brackets, the constructed patterns don\'t work.

Answer 1

It should definitely work well... if you test against a matching String :)

Your problem is that "Student (male): John" starts with an uppercase S, and you're trying to match a lowercase s. That's as simple as it gets!

Note that you may use [()] to match either ( or ):

p = p.replaceAll("[()]", "\\\\$0");

By the way, I would also point out that you could replace the lines:

p = p.replaceAll("\\(", "\\\\(");
p = p.replaceAll("\\)", "\\\\)");

Simply by using:

p = Pattern.quote(p);

Cheers!

Answer 2

Because in line String text = "Student (male): John"; does not match with regex student \(male\)\:\s\w+

Replace input text with text = "student (male): John"; or first phrase strings to phrases[0] = "Student (male)";

Example on Ideone

Answer 3

The following is not doing what you want:

 p = p.replaceAll("\\(", "\\\\(");

You are replacing ( with \\\\(. \\\\( compiled in regex is \\(, which basicly means escape the \ and then (, not escape the (. What you are looking for is the following:

 p = p.replaceAll("\\(", "\\(");