PHP preg_replace

Question

I have to do the following with preg_replace in PHP:

[some text][id] should be replaced by <a href='id'>some_text</a> where id is an integer

Tried the following, unfortunately didn't work as expected:

preg_replace("/\[[^)]\]\[[0-9]+\]/","<a href='$2'>$1</a>",$string);

Also, an example [some text]][id] with extra bracket may be considered, where the last bracket should be taken.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Here's a solution:

$string = '[some text][117]';
$s = preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)\]\[([0-9]+)\]/","<a href='$2'>$1</a>",$string);
var_dump($s);

First - to use $1 (or $2 ) you need to capture pattern in brackets () .

Second mistake - you're trying to find ^) , but you don't have ) in your text. So I replaced ) to ] .

Update for an extra ] :

$s = preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)(\]?)\]\[([0-9]+)\]/","<a href='$3'>$1$2</a>",$string);

Not sure what you need to do with this founded ] , so I added it to a link text.

In case of a lot of ]]] you can use:

$s = preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)(\]*)\]\[([0-9]+)\]/","<a href='$3'>$1$2</a>",$string);

Answer 2

\[(\D+)\]\[(\d+)\]

\\D - Any non-digit \\d - Any digit

Test it here: http://www.phpliveregex.com/p/k4X