正则表达式匹配额外的字符

Question

using: this tool to evaluate my expression

My test string: "Little" Timmy (tim) McGraw

my regex: ^[()"]|.["()]

It looks like I'm properly catching the characters I want but my matches are including whatever character comes just before the match. I'm not sure what, or if anything, I'm doing wrong to be catching the preceding characters like that? The goal is to capture characters we don't want in the name field of one of our systems.

Answer 1

Brief

Your current regex ^[()"]|.["()] says the following:

• ^[()"]|.["()] Match either of the following
  • ^[()"] Match the following
    • ^ Assert position at the start of the line
    • [()"] Match any character present in the list ()"
  • .["()] Match the following
    • . Match any character (this is the issue you were having)
    • ["()] Match any character present in the list "()

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Code

You can actually shorten your regex to just [()"] .

Ultimately, however, it would be much easier to create a negated set that determines which characters are valid rather than those that are invalid. This approach would get you something like [^\\w ] . This means match anything not present in the set. So match any non-word and non-space characters (in your sample string this will match the symbols ()" since they are not in the set).