Question

More or less obvious is :

\[start\](.*?)\[end\]

but that yields the [start] and [end] tag too. How do you omit them?

E.g.: f("[somestartstring]result[someendstring]") == "result"

UPDATE: the suggested answers are not working. My code is:

printfn "%s" (Regex.Match(@"[start]result[end]",
                          "\\[start\\](.*?)\\[end\\]").Groups.[0].Value)

but it still yields the surrounding start and end tags.

My mistake is: the 0 index! Thank you.

Answer 1

You need to use a group, which is a match string within parantheses:

\[start\](.*?)\[end\]

These are numbered from 1 when you come to read them (zero being the whole matched string). (There is also the facility of named groups if you find that more intuitive.)

E.g. in C#:

Match match = new Regex("\[start\](.*?)\[end\]").Match("[start]blah[end]");
string value = match.Groups[1].Value;