In the description, , appears to be in the list of eyes - it is not, it just appears to be.
Maybe remove the commas (and maybe the ors?) from the list of emoticon parts...?

O(n log n) solution. Not really sure I'd flag that as best practice.

most likely it is kata 6 kyu

Very good idea for not using a new variable

This is the best solution. I compared several function, it most fast

+1

Java translation

On fixed test is dysplayed as error message: 'Howdy -)' should equal 'Howdy -('. Don't we have to exchamge -( with -)?
Also on random text 10 error messages return the same kind of unchanged "sad" parantheses. How is that?!

Thanks, Ciprian Amza :-)

Your solution wouldn't pass now anymore.

Can confirm that caps lock on european keyboard behaves like permanently pressing shift key. This means caps lock and shift key at once negate each other.

The description should say "caps lock only matters to letters". From the tests we only know it doesn't apply to numbers but have to find out ourselves about special characters like comma or apostrophe.

I'm tired of solving this Kata, but this Kata is very good! ;)