[olug] Character Removal

[Obi-Wan]

> I'd like to remove all characters between a '(' and the second ')'.

Perl has its uses, but is overly bloated for such a simple operation.
Sed(1) does a wonderful job of this sort of thing.  Assuming you want
to keep the first and last parentheses:

# echo "abc (asdf) asdf (asdf) 1234 (xyz) 67" | sed -e 's/([^)]*)[^)]*)/()/'
abc () 1234 (xyz) 67

If you don't want to keep those parens, then drop the last pair from
that sed command:

# echo "abc (asdf) asdf (asdf) 1234 (xyz) 67" | sed -e 's/([^)]*)[^)]*)//'
abc  1234 (xyz) 67

-- 
Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins