Regex match outer nested tags

Question

I have this string

blabla [IC=\"test\"]Hello, [IC=\"testing\"] this is a nested tag [EC], cya.[EC] blabla

I\'m trying to match the outer [

Answer 1

You could use a recursive pattern (supported in PCRE):

\[IC[^][]*\]
(?:(?:[^][]*|(?R))*)
\[EC\]

See a demo on regex101.com.