regex php: "get rid [link1] get rid [link2] ... get rid" - problem 'getting rid' when there IS NO [link]

How to preg_replace() with a single line to achieve the following outputs?

$string1="get rid1 [link1] get rid2 [link2] ..."; // any number of开发者_StackOverflow社区 links
echo "[<a href=link1>link1</a>][<a href=link2>link2</a>]";
$string2="get rid any text any text get rid"; // = no links: is a possibility
echo "";

I tried the following, which works for example $string1 but not for $string2 above:

$regex="/".
"[^\[\]]*". // the non-bracketed text before: -> eliminate
"\[(.*?)\]". // the bracketed text: [.]: -> convert into links 
"[^\[\]]*"; // get rid of non-bracketed text after: -> eliminate
"/";
echo preg_replace($regex,'<a href=jp.php?jp=\1>[\1]</a>',$string1);

I think non-capturing groups (?:...) might work, but I can't figure it out...

Why not just if?

if ($output = preg_replace($regex,'<a href=jp.php?jp=\1>[\1]</a>',$string1))
echo $output;

Edit: your regex won't work, preg_replace will replace ALL of the matched text so you would need to make the text before and after the link arguments too... Along the lines of:

preg_replace("(text we dont want to replace)(text we do want to replace)(more junk text)",$1." altered $2 = ".$2." ".$3, $string1)

.

$output = preg_replace($regex,'<a href=jp.php?jp=\1>[\1]</a>',$string1);
if ($output != $string1)
echo $output;