Regular expression to extract texts between square brackets

Question

I want to extract the texts from between the square brackets and i am using [(.*?)] but it is not working completely.

Apr 17 13:01:34 10.11.26.83 2012-04-17 00:30:52.222 -0700 ABCD XYZ ALER SOME_TEXT 99.99.182.1 49923 99.99.83.74 80 blocked-policy GLOBAL DENY NONE [type="SOME TEXT" pattern="some-random-pattern" token="/function()"] GET 99.99.83.74/index.html/function() HTTP "-" "Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)" 99.99.182.1 49923 "-" "-"

I want to extract the bold texts. What is the regular expression to do this?

What do you mean by not working completely? I used your regex and you already have the required match in group 1. — Narendra Yadala, Apr 17 '12 at 09:56
It looks as if your error is somewhere else because the regex you are using is correct. — hochl, Apr 17 '12 at 10:08
and how about all-eating `.`? as i remember, it doesn't eat `\n`. maybe i'm wrong — gaussblurinc, Apr 17 '12 at 14:29

Cylian · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-16T11:38:12.953

@rprakash:

Anatomy of the pattern

<!--
\[(.*?)\]

Match the character “[” literally «\[»  
Match the regular expression below and capture its match into backreference number 1 «(.*?)»  
   Match any single character that is not a line break character «.*?»  
      Between zero and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy) «*?»  
Match the character “]” literally «\]»  
-->

While using REGEX it is always safe to use negated character class instead of dot operator.

It might be \[[^\]]+\] as Bohemian said, or may be safer to use \[(?#if grouping required)([^\]\[]+)\].

For making better footholds in this subject visit here.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 09:54

0

Try this:

\[[^\]]+\]

[^\]] is a character class for "any character other than a ]"

answered Apr 17 '12 at 09:54

Bohemian

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Regular expression to extract texts between square brackets

2 Answers2