Regular expression to extract text between square brackets

You can use the following regex globally:

\[(.*?)\]

Explanation:

• \[ : [ is a meta char and needs to be escaped if you want to match it literally.
• (.*?) : match everything in a non-greedy way and capture it.
• \] : ] is a meta char and needs to be escaped if you want to match it literally.

Can brackets be nested?

If not: \[([^]]+)\] matches one item, including square brackets. Backreference \1 will contain the item to be match. If your regex flavor supports lookaround, use

(?<=\[)[^]]+(?=\])

This will only match the item inside brackets.

(?<=\[).+?(?=\])

Will capture content without brackets

• (?<=\[) - positive lookbehind for [

• .*? - non greedy match for the content

• (?=\]) - positive lookahead for ]

EDIT: for nested brackets the below regex should work:

(\[(?:\[??[^\[]*?\]))

This should work out ok:

\[([^]]+)\]