Smallest expression within brackets

Question

I would like to know if this is a good approach to finding out all the expressions within brackets. (I was actually asked to find out the smallest bracket expression, I have omitted the function to check for the smallest string and spaces within the expression).

s = "((a+b*d)*(x/2))*(1+(y+(x-2)/10))"
b = []
j = 0
b.append(j)
stack = []

for i in range(0, len(s)):
    if s[i] == '(':
        j = j + 1
        b.append(j)        
        b[j] = ''
    elif s[i] == ')':
        b[j] = b[j] + ')'        
        stack.append(b[j])
        j = j - 1

    # 0 is omitted to exclude characters outside of brackets  
    for k in range(1, j + 1):
        b[k] = b[k] + s[i]

print(s)
print(stack)

Answer 1

Your code works, but is difficult to understand. Especially it is hard to understand what exactly is stored in b, this list contains both integers and strings. The name b also does not give a clue what it used for.

I would suggest a more straight forward method with more descriptive names for variables:

s = "((a+b*d)*(x/2))*(1+(y+(x-2)/10))"

opening_bracket_pos = []
stack = []

for i in range(0, len(s)):
    if s[i] == '(':
        opening_bracket_pos.append(i)
    elif s[i] == ')':
        start_pos = opening_bracket_pos.pop()
        stack.append(s[start_pos: i+1])

print(s)
print(stack)