Question

I wonder how i can exclude a substring from the result after it matches the pattern.
example:

<a href="?page1"><?php __('string1');?></a>
<a href="?page2"><?php __("string2");?></a>

I want to get only the strings passed as parameters to the __() function. i tried this regex:

'/__\(((\'([^\']+)\')|(\"([^\"]+)\"))/'

but that returns ‘string1’ and “string2” wrapped in single quotes and double quotations.
how can i exclude single quotes and double quotations?

Answer 1

Try this

'/__\(('|")([^\1]+)\1\)/'
       ^1^  ^^2^^^

You can see it online here on Regexr

Every time when you open a round bracket you create a capturing group. So, if you don’t want it use (?:) this would define a non capturing group. I don’t use this here. I rewrote your regex a bit. In my first group I check if there are ' or " and store them into group 1. later on I use the backreference \1 to this group one, to use the correct character.

Your result is then stored always into group 2. How you access this result depends on your used language.