regex for this string : [[key|value]]

keyur

need a regular expression to extract the "value" bit from the the following string

[[key|value]]

sometimes the "key" bit will be missing so the string will be in the following format :

[[value]]

need this urgently... any help will be highly appreciated.

thank you.

laserlight

An (untested) example in PCRE regex would be: /[[(.?|)?(.)]]/

YAOMK

An (untested) example in PCRE regex would be: /[[(.?|)?(.)]]/

That would replace the whole string, and you would need to escape the regex especial character for or "|".

NogDog

If we can assume that the character sequence "]]" would only occur in the case of this special syntax, you could use:

preg_match_all('/[^[|]+(?=]])/', $text, $matches);
// matches would be in $matches[0]

If that is not a safe assumption, then:

preg_match_all('/(?<=\[\[)(?:[^\]]*\|)?([^]]+)(?=]])/', $text, $matches);
// matches would be in $matches[1]

laserlight

That would replace the whole string, and you would need to escape the regex especial character for or "|".

No, since we are looking to extract the value, i.e., $matches[2]. That said, I agree: I forgot to escape the pipe after some modification.

keyur

Thank you guys. It worked.

laserlight

Remember to mark this thread as resolved (if it is) using the thread tools.

keyur

ohh.. thought it worked... but it didnt.

i have multiple occurences of such strings and it doesnt work . See the following string :

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar''' ([[Marathi language|Marathi]], (born [[24 April]], [[1973]]) affectionately called [http://www.littlemastersachin.com 'The Little Master'], or 'The Master Blaster.

I need "Marathi", "24 April" and "1973" from the first, second and third occurence respectively.

laserlight

[man]preg_match_all/man, perhaps?

keyur

I tried the following it works partially but returns me [[value]] instead of "value".

NogDog wrote:
If we can assume that the character sequence "]]" would only occur in the case of this special syntax, you could use:
preg_match_all('/[^[|]+(?=]])/', $text, $matches);
// matches would be in $matches[0]
If that is not a safe assumption, then:
preg_match_all('/(?<=\[\[)(?:[^\]]*\|)?([^]]+)(?=]])/', $text, $matches);
// matches would be in $matches[1]

laserlight

This works for me:

<?php
$str = "Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar''' ([[Marathi language|Marathi]], (born [[24 April]], [[1973]]) affectionately called [http://www.littlemastersachin.com 'The Little Master'], or 'The Master Blaster.";
if (preg_match_all('/\[\[(.*?\|)?(.*?)\]\]/', $str, $matches)) {
    foreach ($matches[2] as $match) {
        echo $match . '<br />';
    }
}
?>

keyur

hi laserlight, thx for helping out.

this bit worked in my php code but the same pattern works randomly for my asp.net code. It also worked in Expresso. Any idea of what it's not working in vb.net

Thanks.

laserlight wrote:

This works for me:

<?php
$str = "Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar''' ([[Marathi language|Marathi]], (born [[24 April]], [[1973]]) affectionately called [http://www.littlemastersachin.com 'The Little Master'], or 'The Master Blaster.";
if (preg_match_all('/\[\[(.*?\|)?(.*?)\]\]/', $str, $matches)) {
    foreach ($matches[2] as $match) {
        echo $match . '<br />';
    }
}
?>

laserlight

this bit worked in my php code but the same pattern works randomly for my asp.net code. It also worked in Expresso. Any idea of what it's not working in vb.net

They might be using the POSIX version. I believe that the pattern should be POSIX compatible if you remove the delimiters, i.e.,

\[\[(.*?\|)?(.*?)\]\]

Not entirely sure though.