Remove "( )" from string words

Hi I need to Remove "()" from any word in DataBase.

My Database(cell) have string words such as:

'NEW' 'May' '(AFP)' 'US' 'prosecutors' 'on' 'Friday' 'unveiled' 'indictment' 'including' 'charges' 'of' 'murder' 'and' 'loan' 'sharking' 'against' . . . .

So, I need to Remove "(" and ")" from (AFP). because My word should be : AFP

Answer 1

[Robert Cumming]

regexp is very compact and powerful - however it can be a bit slow.

If speed is an issue a simple for loop and strrep can sometimes be faster:

 db = { 'NEW' 'May' '(AFP)' 'US' 'prosecutors' 'on' };

 pattern = '\(|)';
 tic
 newdb = regexprep(db, pattern, '');
 toc

 tic
 loopDB = db;
 for ii=1:length(db)
   loopDB{ii} = strrep ( db{ii}, '(', '' );
   loopDB{ii} = strrep ( loopDB{ii}, ')', '' );
 end
 toc
 isequal ( newdb, loopDB )

 Elapsed time is 0.002665 seconds.
 Elapsed time is 0.000087 seconds.

 ans =

     1

[Jan]

strrep operates on cell strings directly:

loopDB = strrep(db,     '(', '');
loopDB = strrep(loopDB, ')', '');

Answer 2

[Alberto]

You should use regexprep to replace anything that matches with parenthesis with an empty string; the pattern that matches any parenthesis shoul be:

   pattern = '(\(|\))';

Its necessary to scape ( or ) using \( or \). See the examples:

>> texto = '(AFP)';
regexprep(texto, '(\(|\))', '')

ans =

AFP

>>  texto = {'(AFP)','(cro'};
regexprep(texto, '(\(|\))', '')

ans = 

      'AFP'    'cro'

[Guillaume]

Note that you don't need to surround the alternation with brackets and you don't need to escape the closing bracket, so this simpler pattern would work just as well:

pattern = '\(|)';
newdb = regexprep(db, pattern, '');