How to remove the square brackets at the beginning and end of the special characters String?

Question

Below is the example where I want to remove the square brackets using Java:-

String specialCharacters = "[!& *=~}[]"
String specialCharactes1 = "[[[&%*@#(#][[]"

I want the result like this respectively:-

!& *=~}[

[[&%*@#(#][[

That Means I want to remove only one square brackets from both the ends. I saw many solutions but those were related to JavaScript.

This can be done using regex but I am not sure How I can replicate this.

Answer 1

Thanks @Elliott Frisch for the solution. This was just a silly mistake of inverted commas. Your solution worked.

System.out.println(specialCharacters.replaceAll("\\[(.+)\\]", "$1"));
System.out.println(specialCharactes1.replaceAll("\\[(.+)\\]", "$1"));

Answer 2

String specialCharacters = "[!& *=~}[]";
if(null!=specialCharacters)
{
   String answer = specialCharacters.substring(specialCharacters.indexOf(" 
                    [")+1,specialCharacters.indexOf("]"));
}

This will work if there is only one [ and ] in the input string