Replacing with backreference in TextMate issue

Question

I am using TextMate to replace expression [my_expression] consisting in characters between open and closed brackets by {my_expression}; so I tried to r

Answer 1

You forgot to escape a character, [^]] should be [^\]].

You also need a capture group. $1 is back-referencing the 1st Capture Group, and you had no capture groups, so use the following Regex:

\[([^\]]*)\]

This adds () around [^\]]*, so the data inside the [] is captured. For more info, see this page on Capture Groups

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However, this RegEx is shorter:

\[(.*?)\]

Also substituting with {$1}

Live Demo on Regex101

Answer 2

Use a capturing group (...):

\[([^\]]*)\]

The $1 is a backreference to the text enclosed with [...].

Here is the regex demo and also Numbered Backreferences.

Also, the TextMate docs:

1. Syntax elements
  (...) group

20.4.1 Captures
To reference a capture, use $n where n is the capture register number. Using $0 means the entire match.

And also:

• If you want to use [, -, ] as a normal character in a character class, you should escape these characters by \.