My regexp stupidity needs assistance before loose all my hair!

[Douglas Livingstone]

which will match anything inside of square brackets. This will match:

"This is a [fix]" $1 will equal "fix"
"This is a [ fix ]" $1 will equal " fix "
"This is a [ *sentence inside of a fix* ]" $1 will equal " *sentence
inside of a fix* "

Hmm... I wonder if he wants to match that much, what about this input text:

"I'm using square brackest in normal text [heh, this is fun![b.]]"

What do you want to match? "[heh, this is " or ""?

Playing on your one, perhaps this is what is needed: /\[([^\[\]\s]*)\]/

Douglas

 

[Kristof Neirynck]

I think that this is what you need: /\[[\w]+\]/

This little application might help you (not sure if it is 100% Ruby
compatible, but may be a start) called TestRexp, which you can get
here: http://regexpstudio.com/RegExpStudio.html

Regex-coach is also quite helpful here.
There is a windows and a linux version.
<http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/>