Match and parse the content of a square-braced placeholder in text

Question

I have a PHP variable ($content) where I need to find a certain pattern that looks like this:

[gallery::name/of/the/folder/]

I would like to search:

- starting with literal characters `[gallery::`
- any other character (variable length)
- ending with "]"

So far, in PHP I have:

preg_match('/\[gallery\:/', $content, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

I can find [gallery: but that's it.

I would like to be able to find the rest (:name/of/the/folder/]).

Philosophical

Answer 1

Try capturing it:

preg_match("/\[gallery::(.*?)]/", $content, $m);

Now $m is an array:

0 => [gallery::/name/of/the/folder/]
1 => /name/of/the/folder/

Junoesque

If the string is 'starting with' something, make sure to prepend a '^' character to "\[gallery" – Mussorgsky

wouldn't multiple occurences ([gallery::/name/of/the/folder/][gallery::/name/of/the/folder/]) cause problems with using a greedy capture on all characters? – Goldschmidt

this will match [gallery::] i would change it to [gallery::(.+?)] – Linkwork

I think OP meant that the pattern started with [gallery::, rather than the search string itself... Maybe... Not sure. – Junoesque

@TimHoolihan it is a non-greedy capture – Linkwork

@Linkwork Using a + is a valid answer too, but since it was supposed to be "any length" I figured 0 was included - after all, what if the path were the empty string (in other words, the current directory)? – Junoesque

Thanks for the quick answer guys. It almost works but I'm having problems with the "/" in the folder name. If I type [gallery::/name/of/the/folder/] it doesn't find any results. But if I take out the "/" I find what I'm looking for. Anyway of finding with the "/" or do I need to replace it with another character? – Philosophical

Are you sure you're typing the path in the right place? Might be a silly question, but there's no reason why a / in the search string would fail to match this regex. – Junoesque

Answer 2

change your regex to

'/\[gallery::([A-Za-z\/]+)\]/'

Since I put the folder/path part in parenthesis, you should get a capture group out of it.

Goldschmidt