Capturing text between square brackets in PHP

Question

I need some way of capturing the text between square brackets. So for example, the following string:

[This] is a [test] string, [eat] my [shorts].

Could be used to create the following array:

Array ( 
     [0] => [This] 
     [1] => [test] 
     [2] => [eat] 
     [3] => [shorts] 
)

I have the following regex, /\[.*?\]/ but it only captures the first instance, so:

Array ( [0] => [This] )

How can I get the output I need? Note that the square brackets are NEVER nested, so that's not a concern.

Naki · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-27T12:53:42.753

115

Matches all strings with brackets:

$text = '[This] is a [test] string, [eat] my [shorts].';
preg_match_all("/\[[^\]]*\]/", $text, $matches);
var_dump($matches[0]);

If You want strings without brackets:

$text = '[This] is a [test] string, [eat] my [shorts].';
preg_match_all("/\[([^\]]*)\]/", $text, $matches);
var_dump($matches[1]);

Alternative, slower version of matching without brackets (using "*" instead of "[^]"):

$text = '[This] is a [test] string, [eat] my [shorts].';
preg_match_all("/\[(.*?)\]/", $text, $matches);
var_dump($matches[1]);

edited Aug 27 '14 at 12:53

answered Apr 11 '12 at 10:53

Naki

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9

And if you want the strings between the brackets: preg_match_all("/\[(.*?)\]/",$text,$matches); – Gert Van de Ven Apr 11 '12 at 10:55
3

@GertVandeVen: Backslashes required. preg_match_all("/\\[(.*?)\\]/",$text,$matches). Probably web removed Yours ;) – Naki Apr 11 '12 at 10:57
@GertVandeVen Weirdly, I now get the following: `Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => [This] [1] => [test] [2] => [eat] [3] => [shorts] ) [1] => Array ( [0] => This [1] => test [2] => eat [3] => shorts ) )` – Chuck Le Butt Apr 11 '12 at 11:17
Yes, you will get the full matches, and the ones between () separately. – Gert Van de Ven Apr 11 '12 at 11:18
1

Basically you can now show: print_r($matches[1]); which will only get you the ones between brackets. – Gert Van de Ven Apr 11 '12 at 11:20
@GertVandeVen Yeah, that's what I've done, I just wasn't expecting it. All good though, thanks! – Chuck Le Butt Apr 11 '12 at 11:42
2

it would be best if your code is `preg_match_all("/\[([^\]]*)\]/", $text, $matches);` – Avinash Raj Aug 25 '14 at 16:57
@AvinashRaj: Updated for a litter faster version. It should be around 0.5 second faster in 1 milion matches. – Naki Aug 27 '14 at 12:56
Why do you not show how to use it for other characters? { } ( ) etc. – Bart Mar 02 '18 at 10:30
i want use with in { } or ( ) how i do it ? – Abdo-Host Jun 25 '20 at 17:24
Can you update a regex to support multiline content?, currently its working for single line only – Edris Oct 23 '20 at 12:05
How to get result in matches[0] without brackets? did anyone solved it? – Ashish Dwivedi Apr 28 '22 at 07:58

Capturing text between square brackets in PHP

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