PHP Regex - Replace substring within a string

Question

If I have the following string for example:

"Value1 *|VALUE_2|* Value3"

I want to be able to remove any substrings from within the string that begins with the chracters | and end in |. I will not know what will be between these characters but this is irrelevant as I want to remove whatever is between them.

Basically, I am just unsure of what pattern to use in the code below.

preg_replace("*|PATTERN|*", "", $str);

Answer 1

| is a special character that needs to be escaped in regex:

preg_replace('/\|[^|]+\|/', '', $str);

Answer 2

preg_replace('/|[^|]+|/', '', $str);

This should do the trick.

Answer 3

preg_replace("/\|.*\|/U", "", $str);

I think this should do the trick..

The /U makes the pattern ungreedy so that in Value1 |VALUE_2| Value3|test the match will be |VALUE_2| instead o |VALUE_2| Value3|

If you only want the contents between the |'s removed, you can do:

preg_replace("/\|.*\|/U", "||", $str);

There are other ways, but this would be the most easy one imho.