Retrieving text outside square brackets in PHP

Question

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

       My [ground]name[test]Jhon[random]petor [shorts].

I m using the below preg match expression but the result could not be expected

    preg_match_all("/\[[^\]]*\]/", $text, $matches);

it giving me the result which is within the square bracket.

    Result : 
     Array ( 
            [0] => [ground] 
            [1] => [test] 
            [2] => [random] 
            [3] => [shorts] 
        )

Expect Output:

       Array ( 
            [0] => [My] 
            [1] => [name] 
            [2] => [Jhon] 
            [3] => [petor] 
        )

Any help that would be great

Is the last one `petor` or `petor `? Same with `My` and `My `? — Chris Haas, Jun 21 '21 at 13:53
Accepted answer here (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25688889/preg-match-all-for-words-in-and-outside-of-brackets) seems to work fine. — nitrin0, Jun 21 '21 at 13:58
Does this answer your question? [preg\_match\_all for words in and outside of brackets](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25688889/preg-match-all-for-words-in-and-outside-of-brackets) — Nico Haase, Jun 21 '21 at 14:04
[`preg_split`](http://php.net/preg_split) might have sufficed. — mario, Jun 21 '21 at 14:04
Your expected output is impossible unless you're manipulating the extractions. — MonkeyZeus, Jun 21 '21 at 14:06
"Retrieving **text** outside square brackets in PHP" - use [`[^\[\]]+(?=\[|$)`](https://regex101.com/r/cIdpWw/1/). Your title does match the body of your question. — MonkeyZeus, Jun 21 '21 at 14:13

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-21T14:09:23.270

You can extend the pattern adding \K to clean what is matched so far and then using an alternation to match 1 or more word characters.

\[[^][]+]\K|\w+

See a regex demo

$re = '/\[[^][]+]\K|\w+/';
$str = 'My [ground]name[test]Jhon[random]petor [shorts].';

preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches);
print_r(array_values(array_filter($matches[0])));

Output

Array
(
    [0] => My
    [1] => name
    [2] => Jhon
    [3] => petor
)

Retrieving text outside square brackets in PHP

1 Answers1