How can I check if a word has parentheses using regular expression

Question

I'm trying to separate the words that has "[]" brackets around them, for example this line

"I hate [running] and [sweating]" how can i use regular expression just to check if a word is wrapped around "running" or "sweating" or any word.

I tried this. but it didn't work.

if(data.word === /[ ]/){}

Answer 1

Here is the expression needed :

/\[([^\[\]]+)\]/

so going by your example we would apply it as the following:

"I hate [running] and [sweating]".match(/\\[([^\\[\\]]+)\\]/g) which will result in the words with the braces , same could be applied on a single word , and we could check whether it match or not to determine if it is surrounded by square brackets

Answer 2

The regular expression you need to test your example string and output all words enclosed by square brackets would be /\\[([\\w]+)\\]/g

The [\\w]+ part selects all words comprised of alphanumeric characters. Including \\[ and \\] explicitly matches the square brackets around those words. The parentheses ( and ) enclose the pattern that describes which parts should be returned.

I can highly recommend regex101.com as a handy playground for trying our regular expressions; it's the first place I went when writing the regular expression above to check for accuracy.

An example of how to implement this can be seen here .