Regex Matching Square Brackets Within Square Brackets Google Spreadsheet

Question

I am currently scripting using Google Script. I'm trying to select anything that isn't the characters within the square bracket by writing:

var cleantext = text.replace(/[^\\s\\w"!,、。\\.?？！:]/g,'');

I want to also keep "[" and "]" and I have followed some of the tutorials here trying "\\\\]" and "\\\\["

var cleantext = text.replace(/[^\\s\\w"!,、。\\.?？！:"\\\\]""\\\\["]/g,'');

or trying \\\\] and \\\\[

var cleantext = text.replace(/[^\\s\\w"!,、。\\.?？！:\\\\]\\\\[]/g,'');

Please feel free to change how my question is worded, as I am finding that I probably don't know what question I'm actually trying to ask here as there are many similar questions with similar titles already here at Stackoverflow.

I wish to edit a whole column of cells, which are a combination of Japanese, Chinese, and English characters.

For an example: "こんにちは、私はJimです😃 | [Audio.Category:Jim]" would output to: "こんにちは、私はJimです [Audio.Category:Jim]"

Deleting emojis, and other characters not defined by what's within the brackets.

Answer 1

To include ] and [ into a JavaScript regex character class, you need to escape ] and you do not have to escape [ :

/[abc[\]xyz]/
     ^^^

If you need to support ASCII letters and Japanese only, you need to add the Japanese letter ranges :

/[^\s"!,、。.?？！:[\][A-Za-z\u3000-\u303F\u3040-\u309F\u30A0-\u30FF\uFF00-\uFFEF\u4E00-\u9FAF\u2605-\u2606\u2190-\u2195\u203B]+/g

Here is a sample solution:

function myFunction() {
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var cell = sheet.getRange('F13').getValue();
  Logger.log(cell);
  var reg_ascii_letter = "A-Za-z";
  var reg_japanese_letter = "\\u3000-\\u303F\\u3040-\\u309F\\u30A0-\\u30FF\\uFF00-\\uFFEF\\u4E00-\\u9FAF\\u2605-\\u2606\\u2190-\\u2195\\u203B";
  var rx = new RegExp("[^\\s\"!,、。.?？！:[\\][" + reg_ascii_letter + reg_japanese_letter + "]+", "g");
  Logger.log(rx);
  var nval = cell.replace(rx, '').replace(/(\s){2,}/g, '$1');
  sheet.getRange('F15').setValue(nval);
}

In a similar way, you may build a Unicode regex for any letter.