[SOLVED] Remove all parenthetical expressions from a string and remove lingering spaces

Remove all parenthetical expressions from a string and remove lingering spaces

$item = "(1) Robin Hood (hero)";

Text inside brackets can be changed.

How do I remove all the brackets with text inside them from the string?

We should get this:

$item = "Robin Hood";

Solution

You can use preg_replace as:

$item = preg_replace('/\(.*?\)/s','',$item);

Looks like you also want to remove leading and trailing spaces after the replacement.
You can make use of trim for that as:

$item = trim( preg_replace('/\(.*?\)/s','',$item));

The regex used is \(.*?\):

( and ) are regex meta-characters used for grouping. To match literal paranthesis you need to escape them by preceding them with a \.
You match any arbitrary text between the parenthesis by using .*?. You could also do the same using [^)]*
. by default does not match a newline. To make is match a newline we use the s modifier. Without it we would fail to do the replacement in "(hello\nworld) Hi"