I have a guestbook I wrote a long while back and wanted to add some pizazz to it. I want to replace occurences of font colors (represented as  [color]some text[/color].

For example: 

This is a [blue]test[/blue]
[red]Hello![/red] [orange]world![/orange]

[download]
Now it won't work on all colors, I'll have them predefined. But I have no idea how the regex would work because I need it to make sure it doesn't crash. 
This is a [blue]test[/blue] oops![/blue]

[download]
I would want it to match only the first time of each successful match and leave the uncessary ones as-is.

This is a [blue][red]test[/red][/blue]

[download]
It'd want it to match the OUTTER MOST. If the whole sentence is wrapped in BLUE and it has other color tags, it's all blue. Different font colors can coexist on the same line, however, if properly used. Color codes cannot overlap eachother.

Anyone have experience with this? Regexes are not my strong point.

In reply to guestbook font [colors] by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.