Regex repeated group

Question

Having trouble with a repeated capturing group:

(?:\[)(?:(?:\s*?)([2-9AQTKJ][shcd])+?(?:\s*?)).*?(?:\])

See demo

Basically I want to match the card value ( As , 8h etc..) combinations inside the square brackets only

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use a regex with a \\G operator to match multiple substrings inside [...] :

(?:\[|(?!^)\G)\s*\K[2-9AQTKJ][shcd](?=[^\]]*])

See regex demo

In short, this PCRE regex will match a text that:

• (?:\\[|(?!^)\\G)\\s*\\K - starts with [ or is at the end of the previous successful match followed with zero or more whitespace symbols
• [2-9AQTKJ][shcd] - matches 2 characters each of the defined sets
• (?=[^\\]]*]) - a positive lookahead checking if there is a closing ] ahead of the current position

PHP demo :

$re = '~(?:\[|(?!^)\G)\s*\K[2-9AQTKJ][shcd](?=[^\]]*])~'; 
$str = "[As 4h 8s] [ As 4h ] [As4h] As [ 4h "; 
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

Answer 2

Is this want you want?

/\\[([^\\]]+)\\]/

https://regex101.com/r/vT8aC8/2

EDIT ( Full PHP Solution )

$str= "[As 4h 8s] [ As 4h ] [As4h] As [ 4h ";

preg_match_all("/\[([^\]]+)\]/", $str, $matches);
$values = $matches[1];
$result = [];
foreach($values as $value)
{
   $parts = preg_split("/ /", $value, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
   foreach($parts as $part)
   {
    array_push($result, $part);
   }
}
var_dump($result); // $result will contain all the values you want