Question

I need a simple help:
need to match:

[sometext]
[sometext value=1]
[sometext value=1 anothervalue=2]

with php regex and replace with null in entire $content variable

$content = str_replace('/??????/','',$content);

What should I place instead of question marks?

Ps… anybody know a good resource for dummies to learn regex?

Answer 1

The regex that you should use should be something like:

/\[[^\]]*\]/

It basically breaks down to:

• \[ matches the opening square bracket.
• [^\]]* matches anything until the next closing square bracket.
• \] matches the ending square bracket.

Also, you should use preg_replace, as str_replace doesn’t accept a regex. So you end up with:

$content = preg_replace('/\[[^\]]*\]/', '', $content);

You can find plenty of info about the regex flavour used in PHP in the PCRE regex syntax page of the PHP doc.