Regex to match everything between the first and last occurrence of two distinct characters

Question

I have the following code:

$str_val = "L(ine 1(
    L(ine 2)
    Line 3
    Line 4)";
$regex = '/\(([^\)]*?)\)/i';
preg_match($regex, $str_val, $matches_arr);
print_r($matches_arr);

This code matches everything between the first ( and the first ) .

I'm looking for what I would put in $regex that would match everything between the first ( and the last ) .

I'd appreciate the assistance.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use this: -

'/\((.*)\)/s'

/s modifier is used to enable the dot metacharacter to match everything including a newline. And, since .* is a greedy quantifier, it will match the longest string possible. So, it will match till the last ) .

Answer 2

Try this regular expression:

\([^\)]*\)

The first match is what you need.

Answer 3

Just do a greedy search

$regex = '/\(.*\)/s';

If you really want to have everything between (...) use this one

$regex = '/\((.*)\)/s';
preg_match($regex, $str_val, $matches_arr);
echo $matches_arr[1];