Re^2: Regular expressions: Extracting certain text from a line

[Wcool]

I used the

 tag as the pseudo HTML is creating havoc on square brackets.
<code>

Basically I want the most outer [ some chars] or { some chars } but no
+t [] or {}

2 other examples:

1)
a[] = [ this is a test { test2 } ] 
Should only match [ this is a test { test2 } ]

2)
a[] = [ this is a [ test ] { test2 } ]
Should return [ this is a [ test ] { test2 } ]

I simplified by looking only at square brackets but still no joy.

I thought of something like this:

\[    <-  a square bracket
.[^\/]  <- followed by any character but not an end bracket 
+      <- at least one character

I give up, I will just look for brackets and if it matches empty brackets I filter them out in the code