Regular Expression to match [php]code[/php]

As part of a project, I need to analyse string which may contain a reference to PHP in the following manner:

[php]functionName(args1, args2)[/php]

The function name is not always the same, and I would like to replace everything in the above example (including the pseudo-tags) with another value.

Can anyone suggest a Regular Expression to effectively match the pattern [php]anything[/php].

Sorry if this is a basic开发者_JS百科 question, but I suck at Regular Expressions!

I think "\[php\](.*?)\[\/php\]" would do the trick.

Edit: you may or may not need the double quotes-- not sure how you're ultimately using the regex string.

<?php

$s = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, [php]functionName(args1, args2)[/php] ok.";

echo preg_replace("/\[php\][^\[]+\[\/php\]/", "seems to work", $s) . "\n";

// prints => Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, seems to work ok.

?>

If constructs like [ php ], [/*comment/*php] (or other crazy stuff) are not allowed, you can use this:

/\[php\](.*?)\[\/php\]/

The first matched group will be the text inside the tags. I think the regex is quite intuitive, except for the ?: it will be lazy and match text only until the first closing tag, so that if you have [php]...[/php] [php]...[/php] the regex will not match ...[/php] [php]... (that is, between the first [php] and the second [/php])

If you're using WordPress, but sure to look into the shortcode API.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode_API

And if not consider grabbing its code. It was written so it could be used in any app.

Try this:

$start_tag ='\\\\[php\\\\]\\\\s*';
$function  ='((\\\\w+)\\\\s*\\\\(([^)]*)\\\\)';
$end_tag   ='\\\\s*\\\\[\\\\/php\\\\]';

$re='/(' . $start_tag . $function . $end_tag . ')/';

which is:

(                 # start capture group #1 - full match
\[                # literal '['
php               # literal 'php'
\]                # literal ']'
\s*               # optional whitespace
(                 # start capture group #2 - full function
  (               # start capture group #3 - function name
    \w+           # one or more word chars [A-Za-z0-9_]
  )               # end capture group #3
  \(              # literal '('
    (             # start capture group #4 - function arguments
      [^)]*       # zero or more non-')' chars
    )             # end capture group #4
  \)              # literal ')'
)                 # end capture group #2
\s*               # optional whitespace
\[                # literal '['
php               # literal 'php'
\]                # literal ']'
)                 # end capture group #1

try using

\[php\](.*)\[\/php\]

You can search for string between these tags eg

\[PHP\](.+[^\b\[])\[/PHP\]