Regular expression: trying to match {\*\

retoknaak

Hello!
I am trying to match {*.....} in a string and wrote the following:

/{\*\[^}]*?}/

but it don't work. I can't figure out why, since everyting should be ok.
// are the delemiters... ok
{ is a special char and need to be backslashed --> {
\ too --> \
too --> *
\ too --> \
then i want to match everything to the next closing }
so I use the negating character class [^}] (the backslash is maybe not nedded but it should neither be wrong), with minimun matching style ?
and last } needs backslahing too: }

Can somebody give me a hint why it don't work or test it out to see if it's maybe a bug of the software I have installed?
Thank you!

tomhath

Hard to keep track of all those backslashes. I added one more before the [ and it seems to work:

<?php

$text = "{*.....} ";

$regex = "/{\*\[^}]*?}/";

if ( preg_match($regex, $text) ) {
echo "Works...";
}
?>

retoknaak

Thankyou tomhath!!

I tried it out.... the problem is I have following complete string:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\uc1 \deff0\deflang1033\deflangfe1033{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fcharset0\fprq2{*\panose 02020603050405020304}....

And the regex matches from the beginning of the file, not just from {*...

If I use this:
"/{\*\[^}{]*?}/"
It seem better... but I just can't figure out why {\*\ don't work... at this point it's a sort of academic interest, not just to get a working solution...
Anyone an idea??

retoknaak

The most strange is that when I use this:
$newText=preg_replace("/({\*\)[^{}{]*?}/","[\1]",} $Text);

\1 contains {\, not {*\ as I would like and expect!!

retoknaak

Solution:
"/{[\]*[\].*?}/"