'How to highlight brackets [] and the text within IF it contain specific words or symbol using RegEx?

I'm using this regex /\[(.*?)\]/gi to highlight all texts inside brackets including the brackets.

However, it's giving me a lot of false positives, and I'd like to limit the highlights to brackets that contain specific words and symbols.

Those are: 1. RSVP & 2. §

So for example, I have the ff:

[RSVP dog] [§111] [cat]

It shouldn't target [cat] anymore.

How do I go about doing this if it's possible?

Thank you in advance!

regex


Solution 1:[1]

You can use

\[[^\]\[]*(?:RSVP|§)[^\]\[]*]

See the regex demo.

Details:

  • \[ - a [ char
  • [^\]\[]* - zero or more chars other than [ and ] (depending on regex flavor, you might need to use [^][]* or [^\][]*)
  • (?:RSVP|§) - RSVP or §
  • [^\]\[]* - zero or more chars other than [ and ] (depending on regex flavor, you might need to use [^][]* or [^\][]*)
  • ] - a ] char (it must be escaped only in some very few regex flavors, so you might need to use \]).

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Wiktor Stribiżew

Related Questions