regex to match contents of last [bracketed text]

Question

Target string:

Come to the castle [Mario], I've baked you [a cake]

I want to match the contents of the last brackets, ignoring the other brackets ie

a cake

I'm a bit stuck, can anyone provide the answer?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '11 at 13:16

2

Try this, uses a negative look ahead assertion

\[[^\[]*\](?!\[)$

answered Mar 05 '11 at 13:16

Paul Creasey

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`(?!\[)$` is always true as there cannot be a `[` after the end of the string. – Gumbo Mar 05 '11 at 13:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '11 at 13:25

This should do it:

\[([^[\]]*)][^[]*(?:\[[^\]]*)?$

\[([^[\]]*)] matches any sequence of […] that does not contain [ or ];
[^[]* matches any following characters that are not [ (i.e. the begin of another potential group of […]);
(?:\[[^\]]*)?$ matches a potential single [ that is not followed by a closing ].

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 05 '11 at 13:19

You could use some sort of a look-ahead. And because we don't know the precise nature of what text/characters will have to be processed, it could look something like this, but it will need a little work:

\[[a-z\s]*\](?!.*\[([a-z\s]*)\])

Your contents should be matched in \1, or possibly \2.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 05 '11 at 14:18

Simple is best: .*\[(.*?)] will do what you want; with nested brackets it will return the last, innermost one and ignore bad nesting. There's no need for a negative character class: the .*? makes sure you don't have any right brackets in the match, and since the .* makes sure you match at the last possible spot, it also keeps out any 'outer' left brackets.

regex to match contents of last [bracketed text]

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