Negative lookbehind before an eager quantifier

Question

I need to refactor some PHP annotations, I want to replace string[] with array<int, string>.

I've tried to match the appropriate annotations with this PCRE regex:

(?<!\$|>)\w+\[\]

But it doesn't work, here's how the regex is matching:

The two latest lines shouldn't match. Is there any way to create a working regex for this or should I use create a custom script to do this?

Answer 1

You may use

\b(?<!\$|->)\w+\[]

See the PCRE regex demo.

Details

• \b - word boundary
• (?<!\$|->) - a negative lookbehind that fails the match if there is a $ or -> immediately to the left of the current location
• \w+ - 1+ word chars.
• \[] - a [] substring.

See PHP demo:

$str = '/** @var string[] */
/** @return string[] */
* @param Company[]|null $companies

$icons[] = static::getIconDetailsFromLink($link);
$this->properties[] = $property;';

if (preg_match_all('/\b(?<!\$|->)\w+\[]/', $str, $matches)) {
  print_r($matches);
}