php - Regex to match everything between the first and last occurrence of two distinct characters

Question

I have the following code:

$str_val = "L(ine 1(
    L(ine 2)
    Line 3
    Line 4)";
$regex = '/(([^)]*?))/i';
preg_match($regex, $str_val, $matches_arr);
print_r($matches_arr);

This code matches everything between the first ( and the first ).

I'm looking for what I would put in $regex that would match everything between the first ( and the last ).

I'd appreciate the assistance.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use this: -

'/((.*))/s'

/s modifier is used to enable the dot metacharacter to match everything including a newline. And, since .* is a greedy quantifier, it will match the longest string possible. So, it will match till the last ).