Question

For JavaScript, how to use regex to extract content from the a square bracket?
example:

var str ='1.2.3.4 - - [01/Dec/2011:11:14:42 -0800]'
var result = str.match('\[.?*\]');

the input '\[.?*\]' does not work for me even with \ [ \ ]

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try this:

var myregexp = /\[(.*?)\]/;
var match = myregexp.exec(subject);
if (match != null) {
    result = match[1];
}

The content of [] will be captured by backreference $1. Use the lazy quantifier when doing this kind of extraction. Otherwise if you had two sets of brackets :

[asdfjhasdf][asdfafas] you would only get one of them from the first [ to the last ]