RegEx to extract words in brackets not working

Question

I am using RegEx and exec to extract words but it is returning the full first match, not all the matches separately.

The string is 'one two [three four] five [six] seven [nine ten]' . The result should be 'three four' , 'six' , 'nine ten' , instead of '[three four] five [six] seven [nine ten]' .

var text = "one two [three four] five [six] seven [nine ten]" 
var brackets = /\[([^]+)\]/g; 
var match; 
while (match = brackets.exec(text)) {
   console.log(match);
}

What am I missing?

Answer 1

The problem is with the capturing group ([^]+) .

[^]+ matches any character, including newline as there is nothing specified in the negated character class.

Use the below regex

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

[^[\\]]+ : will match one or more characters except square brackets [ and ] .

 var text = "one two [three four] five [six] seven [nine ten]" var brackets = /\\[([^[\\]]+)\\]/g; var match; while (match = brackets.exec(text)) { console.log(match[1]); } 

---

You can also use /\\[(.*?)\\]/g where .*? will match anything except ] .

 var text = "one two [three four] five [six] seven [nine ten]" var brackets = /\\[(.*?)\\]/g; var match; while (match = brackets.exec(text)) { console.log(match[1]); }