php regex : How do I match this registry pathing?

Question

I'm not very good with regex and i've been kinda scratching my head on this one. I got the following php code using preg_match which is supposed to match all characters in the registry pathing except for the record number... which in this case is "record??]":

<?php 
$reg_section = "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\SOFTWARE\INTERSTAR TECHNOLOGIES\XMEDIUS\CONFIG MANAGER\SYSTEM\COMPANIES\RECORD11]";

$pattern = "/^(\[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\\\SOFTWARE\\\INTERSTAR TECHNOLOGIES\\\XMEDIUS\\\CONFIG MANAGER\\\SYSTEM\\\COMPANIES\\\RECORD(\d+)\])$/";
if ( preg_match($pattern, $reg_section )) { 

echo "Found"; 
} else { 

echo "not found"; 
}

?>

The error I get is:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_IF in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\xfax\regmatch.php on line 5

thanks in advance

Answer 1

You have to escape the [ too:

/^\[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\\SOFTWARE\\INTERSTAR TECHNOLOGIES\\XMEDIUS\\CONFIG MANAGER\\SYSTEM\\COMPANIES\\RECORD(\d+)]$/

Otherwise it marks the begin of a character class.

This works:

$subject = "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\\SOFTWARE\\INTERSTAR TECHNOLOGIES\\XMEDIUS\\CONFIG MANAGER\\SYSTEM\\COMPANIES\\RECORD11]";
$pattern = "/^\\[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\\\\SOFTWARE\\\\INTERSTAR TECHNOLOGIES\\\\XMEDIUS\\\\CONFIG MANAGER\\\\SYSTEM\\\\COMPANIES\\\\RECORD\\d+\\]$/";
var_dump(preg_match($pattern, $subject));