PHP: regular expression to remove bracket codes

Question

I am trying to make a function to remove all the bracket codes but it doesn't seem to be working,

function anti_code($content)
{
    # find the matches and then remove them
    $output = preg_replace("/\[a-z\s+\]/is", "", $content);

    # return the result
    return $output;
}

I want these codes to be removed in the output,

Agro[space]terrorism
Agro[en space]terrorism

so that I can get

Agroterrorism

I must be something wrong in my regular expression! Please let me know. Thanks.

as an aside, never use double quoted strings where single quoted ones will do, especially in regex patterns — Walf
– Walf, Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 13:35

BoltClock · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-21 13:15:26Z

4

You escaped the [], but didn't add a second set of unescaped [] to designate a character class. Also, the s is not necessary if you're not using the . metacharacter in your regex.

Try this:

/\[[a-z\s]+\]/i

If you don't care what's between the square brackets and just want to remove everything contained in them, this will do:

/\[[^]]+\]/i

answered Jan 21, 2011 at 13:15

BoltClock

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1 Comment

BoltClock Over a year ago

@ircmaxell: I'm trying to defy the constant connection reset errors that I'm actually getting right now, and showing my wi-fi router who's boss.

vmg · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-21 13:27:58Z

0

Try \[[a-z\s]+\] It will capture brackets and all contents

edited Jan 21, 2011 at 13:27

answered Jan 21, 2011 at 13:18

vmg

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2 Comments

ircmaxell Over a year ago

What would happen if you tried to match that against foo[bar]baz[biz buz]?

Walf Over a year ago

make it ungreedy \\[.*?\\] or just go with preg_replace('/\\[(?>[^\\]]*)\\]/', '', $content); less readable but the once-only subpattern makes it more efficient

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