Regular expression to get text between square brackets including disparity?

Question

I need to find a regular expression for use in C# (JavaScript as well), for get the text inside the either square brackets combination.

I try several ways, but I give up

Answer 1

If you prefer to use a regular expression, the following will work.

\[([^[\]]+)\]

See Live Demo

Consider replacing those characters instead of trying to match between them.

String input  = @"[[[text]]]]]]]]]]]]]";
String output = Regex.Replace(input, @"[[\]]", "");
Console.WriteLine(output); //=> "text"

Answer 2

This will exclude the square brackets:

((?!\[)(?!\]).)+

Demo

Explanation

Answer 3

This matches everything except square brackets: [^\[\]]+

This captures anything that is not a square bracket between any number of open (LHS) and close (RHS) square brackets:

\[+([^\[\]]+)\]+

Example usage in Javascript:

'[[[[[test]]]]'.match(/\[+([^\[\]]+)\]+/)
> ["[[[[[test]]]]", "test"]

The regex tester at http://regexpal.com/ is useful for trying out regexes.

Answer 4

Try this

This matches everything except square brackets:

\[([^\[\]]+)\]

Output

text

text

tex