I have to do the following with preg_replace() in PHP:
[some text][id] should be replaced by <a href='id'>some_text</a> where id is an integer
Tried the following, unfortunately didn't work as expected:
preg_replace("/\[[^)]\]\[[0-9]+\]/", "<a href='$2'>$1</a>", $string);
Also, an example [some text]][id] with extra bracket may be considered, where the last bracket should be taken.
Here's a solution:
$string = '[some text][117]';
$s = preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)\]\[([0-9]+)\]/","<a href='$2'>$1</a>",$string);
var_dump($s);
First - to use $1 (or $2) you need to capture pattern in brackets ().
Second mistake - you're trying to find ^), but you don't have ) in your text. So I replaced ) to ].
Update for an extra ]:
$s = preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)(\]?)\]\[([0-9]+)\]/","<a href='$3'>$1$2</a>",$string);
Not sure what you need to do with this founded ], so I added it to a link text.
In case of a lot of ]]] you can use:
$s = preg_replace("/\[([^\]]+)(\]*)\]\[([0-9]+)\]/","<a href='$3'>$1$2</a>",$string);