You can just use the string's replace function, that is a simpler version that doesn't involve regular expressions, so you don't have to wring your hands with worry about special regular expression characters. Calling it is easy:
String result =s.replace(".", "");
And yes, it does replace all instances of '.' with 'something':
In your case your code can look something like this:
String[] specialChars = {"|", "/", ":", "."};
for (String specialChar : specialChars) {
text = text.replace(specialChar, "");
}