[RESOLVED] regular expression replace only once

jansky

to all guru

i do have these regular expression that remove the bracket content eg:
$string='[mainpage] this is the outpout';
and the output is "this is the outpout" using this
regular expression method

$str ="[mainpage] this is the outpout";
$str = preg_replace('#^\[.*]#is', "\\1", $str); 
echo $str // output::this is the outpout;

now when i use another string like :

$str="[mainpage] this is the output[1]";
$str = preg_replace('#^\[.*]#is', "\\1", $str); 
echo $str // no output

seems the preg_replace replace all the string inside the bracket
now how can i remove only the first bracket and retaining the rest bracket

Thanks in Advance

nrg_alpha

Perhaps something like?

$str = "[mainpage] this is the output[1]";
$str = preg_replace('#\[[^]]+\]#', '', $str);
echo $str // this is the output

Weedpacket

Or use .? instead of .

See http://www.php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.php#regexp.reference.repetition or http://www.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php

jansky

nrg_alpha;10912903 wrote:

Perhaps something like?

$str = "[mainpage] this is the output[1]";
$str = preg_replace('#\[[^]]+\]#', '', $str);
echo $str // this is the output

thanks this works 🙂 i did't know that we can use [^]] pattern

I use the ? question mark but seems having trouble when the string is something like this

$str=[hello][two]test[ag]

nrg_alpha

jansky;10912908 wrote:
i did't know that we can use [^]] pattern

That is simply a character class that says 'anything that is not a ]' . In general negated character classes are pretty fast and solid, and when they can be employed as opposed to .* or .+, it is preferable.

Using .* or .+ often has it's own pitfalls and really should be exercised with care, as there are potential speed and accuracy issues involving those.