in reply to Regular expressions: Extracting certain text from a line

You have \{.+?\}.

From your description, you don't want [] within {...} and you don't want {} within [ ... ], so your "in between" groups should reflect that:

    /(\{[^\[\]]{}]+?\})|.../

[download]

I think there are ways to better extract stuff within matching pairs of parentheses, but in the long run, you'll have to look at a proper parser for your grammar.

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Re^2: Regular expressions: Extracting certain text from a line
by Wcool (Novice) on Apr 07, 2014 at 11:45 UTC
    I used the 
     tag as the pseudo HTML is creating havoc on square brackets.
<code>

Basically I want the most outer [ some chars] or { some chars } but no
+t [] or {}

2 other examples:

1)
a[] = [ this is a test { test2 } ] 
Should only match [ this is a test { test2 } ]

2)
a[] = [ this is a [ test ] { test2 } ]
Should return [ this is a [ test ] { test2 } ]

    [download]

    I simplified by looking only at square brackets but still no joy.

    I thought of something like this: 

    \[    <-  a square bracket
.[^\/]  <- followed by any character but not an end bracket 
+      <- at least one character

    [download]
    I give up, I will just look for brackets and if it matches empty brackets I filter them out in the code
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Don't give up too quickly!

      (\[(?:[^\[\]]++|(?1))+\])

      That should get you started ;-)

[reply]
[d/l]

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