Question

How can match

$string = "Foo Bar (Any Group - ANY GROUP Baz)";

Should return as “Foo Bar (Any Group – Baz)”

Is it possible without bruteforce as here Replace repeating strings in a string ?

Edit:
* The group could consist of 1-4 words while each word could match [A-Za-z0-9\/\(\)]{1,30}
* The separator would always be -

Answer 1

Leaving the space out of the list of allowed “word” characters, the following works for your example:

$result = preg_replace(
    '%
    (                 # Match and capture
     (?:              # the following:...
      [\w/()]{1,30}   # 1-30 "word" characters
      [^\w/()]+       # 1 or more non-word characters
     ){1,4}           # 1 to 4 times
    )                 # End of capturing group 1
    ([ -]*)           # Match any number of intervening characters (space/dash)
    \1                # Match the same as the first group
    %ix',             # Case-insensitive, verbose regex
    '\1\2', $subject);