How can I remove the closing square bracket using regex in Python?

I have a messy list of strings (list_strings), where I am able to remove using regex the unwanted characters, but I am struggling to also remove the closing bracket ] . How can I also remove those ? I guess I am very close...

#the list to clean
list_strings = ['[ABC1: text1]', '[[DC: this is a text]]', '[ABC-O: potatoes]', '[[C-DF: hello]]']

#remove from [ up to : 
for string in list_strings:
  cleaned = re.sub(r'[\[A-Z\d\-]+:\s*', '', string)
  print(cleaned)

# current output

>>>text1]
>>>this is a text]]
>>>potatoes]
>>>hello]

Desired output:

text1
this is a text
potatoes
hello

Solution

You can use

cleaned = re.sub(r'^\[+[A-Z\d-]+:\s*|]+$', '', string)

See the Python demo and the regex demo.

Alternatively, to make sure the string starts with [[word: and ends with ]s, you may use

cleaned = re.sub(r'^\[+[A-Z\d-]+:\s*(.*?)\s*]+$', r'\1', string)

See this regex demo and this Python demo.

And, in case you simply want to extract that text inside, you may use

# First match only
m = re.search(r'\[+[A-Z\d-]+:\s*(.*?)\s*]', string)
if m:
    print(m.group(1))

# All matches
matches = re.findall(r'\[+[A-Z\d-]+:\s*(.*?)\s*]', string)

See this regex demo and this Python demo.

Details

^ - start of string
\[+ - one or more [ chars
[A-Z\d-]+ - one or more uppercase ASCII letters, digits or - chars
: - a colon
\s* - zero or more whitespaces
| - or
]+$ - one or more ] chars at the end of string.

Also, (.*?) is a capturing group with ID 1 that matches any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible. \1 in the replacement refers to the value stored in this group memory buffer.