PHP - Find substrings between two regex expressions

Question

I need a function that returns all substrings between a regex expression that matches anything and a delimiter.

$str = "{random_one}[SUBSTRING1] blah blah blah {random_two}[SUBSTRING2] blah blah blah{random_one}[SUBSTRING3]";

$resultingArray = getSubstrings($str)

$resultingArray should result in:
array(
    [0]: "SUBSTRING1",
    [1]: "SUBSTRING2",
    [2]: "SUBSTRING3"
)

I've been messing with regex with no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

It's a bit unclear. You need everything between the brackets? Try this. — ishegg
– ishegg, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 1:43
@ishegg yes everything between the brackets after {anything}[ this_is_what_i_need ] - i'll check that out — DanielRead
– DanielRead, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 1:44
Oh, if there needs to be a string between curly before, try this instead. The matches are in $matches[1] — ishegg
– ishegg, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 1:45
@ishegg $matches[1] is near perfect! Do you know how to remove the brackets from it though?? — DanielRead
– DanielRead, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 1:49
Leave them out of the capturing group - I'll write an answer, just a second. — ishegg
– ishegg, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 1:50

ishegg · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-20 01:52:53Z

2

You can achieve that with this regular expression:

/{.+?}\[(.+?)\]/i

Details

{.+?}   # anything between curly brackets, one or more times, ungreedily
\[      # a bracket, literally
(.+?)   # anything one or more times, ungreedily. This is your capturing group - what you're after
\]      # close bracket, literally
i       # flag for case insensitivity

In PHP it would look like this:

<?php
$string = "{random_one}[SUBSTRING1] blah [SUBSTRINGX] blah blah {random_two}[SUBSTRING2] blah blah blah{random_one}[SUBSTRING3]";
preg_match_all("/{.+?}\[(.+?)\]/i", $string, $matches);
var_dump($matches[1]);

Demo

answered Sep 20, 2017 at 1:52

ishegg

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2 Comments

DanielRead Over a year ago

This is exactly what I needed, Thank you so much!

ishegg Over a year ago

It's no problem. Good luck!

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