Match contents within square brackets, including nested square brackets

Question

I am attempting to write a spoiler identification system so that any spoilers in a string are replaced with a specified spoiler character.

I want to match a string s

Answer 1

More direct solution

This solution will omit empty or whitespace only substrings

public static List<String> getStrsBetweenBalancedSubstrings(String s, Character markStart, Character markEnd) {
    List<String> subTreeList = new ArrayList<String>();
    int level = 0;
    int lastCloseBracket= 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
        char c = s.charAt(i);
            if (c == markStart) {
                    level++;
                    if (level == 1 && i != 0 && i!=lastCloseBracket &&
                        !s.substring(lastCloseBracket, i).trim().isEmpty()) {
                            subTreeList.add(s.substring(lastCloseBracket, i).trim());
                }
            }
        } else if (c == markEnd) {
            if (level > 0) { 
                level--;
                lastCloseBracket = i+1;
            }
            }
    }
    if (lastCloseBracket != s.length() && !s.substring(lastCloseBracket).trim().isEmpty()) {
        subTreeList.add(s.substring(lastCloseBracket).trim());  
    }
    return subTreeList;
}

Then, use it as

String input = "Jim ate a [sandwich][ooh] with [pickles] and [dried [onions]] and ] [an[other] match] and more here";
List<String> between_balanced =  getStrsBetweenBalancedSubstrings(input, '[', ']');
System.out.println("Result: " + between_balanced);
// => Result: [Jim ate a, with, and, and ], and more here]

Original answer (more complex, shows a way to extract nested parentheses)

You can also extract all substrings inside balanced parentheses and then split with them:

String input = "Jim ate a [sandwich] with [pickles] and [dried [onions]] and ] [an[other] match]";
List<String> balanced = getBalancedSubstrings(input, '[', ']', true);
System.out.println("Balanced ones: " + balanced);
List<String> rx_split = new ArrayList<String>();
for (String item : balanced) {
    rx_split.add("\\s*" + Pattern.quote(item) + "\\s*");
}
String rx = String.join("|", rx_split);
System.out.println("In-betweens: " + Arrays.toString(input.split(rx)));

And this function will find all []-balanced substrings:

public static List<String> getBalancedSubstrings(String s, Character markStart, 
                                     Character markEnd, Boolean includeMarkers) {
    List<String> subTreeList = new ArrayList<String>();
    int level = 0;
    int lastOpenBracket = -1;
    for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
        char c = s.charAt(i);
        if (c == markStart) {
            level++;
            if (level == 1) {
                lastOpenBracket = (includeMarkers ? i : i + 1);
            }
        }
        else if (c == markEnd) {
            if (level == 1) {
                subTreeList.add(s.substring(lastOpenBracket, (includeMarkers ? i + 1 : i)));
            }
            if (level > 0) level--;
        }
    }
    return subTreeList;
}

See IDEONE demo

Result of the code execution:

Balanced ones: ['[sandwich], [pickles], [dried [onions]]', '[an[other] match]']
In-betweens: ['Jim ate a', 'with', 'and', 'and ]']

Credits: the getBalancedSubstrings is based on the peter.murray.rust's answer for How to split this “Tree-like” string in Java regex? post.