Having the advantage of the well formatted question, I favor split over regex: 

use strict;
use warnings;
while(<DATA>){
        print +( split /\]|\[/ )[1], "\n";
}
__DATA__
john[JM]mcgroddy
stephen[SG]gomsey
yuri[YA]alchenko

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In reply to Re: Parsing a Word placed between special characters by hdb
in thread Parsing a Word placed between special characters by pillaipraveen

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