regular expression gone wrong

Question

I want to find all strings looking like [!plugin=tesplugin arg=dfd arg=2!] and put them in array. Important feature: the string could contain arg= uments or NOT(in some cases). and of course there could be any number of arg 's. So the string could look like: [!plugin=myname!] or [!plugin=whatever1 arg=22!] or even [!plugin=gal-one arg=1 arg=text arg=tx99!] . I need to put them all in $str array items

Here is what i did...

$inp = "[!plugin=tesplugin arg=dfd!] sometxt [!plugin=second arg=1 arg=2!] 1sd";
preg_match_all('/\[!plugin=[a-z0-9 -_=]*!]/i', $inp, $str);

but $str[0][0] contains:

[!plugin=tesplugin arg=dfd!] sometxt [!plugin=second arg=1 arg=2!]

instead of putting each expression in a new array item.. I think my problem in regex.. but can't find one. Plz help...

Answer 1

The last ] needs to be escaped and the - in the character class needs to be at the start, end, or escaped. As is it is a range of ascii characters between a space and underscore.

\[!plugin=[a-z0-9 \-_=]*!\]

Regex101 Demo: https://regex101.com/r/zV4bO2/1