How to match the content in a pair of brackets, no matter how many pairs of brackets are contained in the content?

Question

I want to replace

GD[many[[brackets]]], GD[evenMore[[[[brackets]]]]]

with

GD[someStuff], GD[someOtherStuff]

How can I match the correct pair of brackets? These patterns are scattered in a large document and might be enclosed in other brackets. The only way to identify them is through the prefix GD followed by a left bracket [. In the first place, I wanted to use :%s but could not find a solution to identify the pairing right bracket ].

Answer 1

From my point of view the solution of @Mattb is probably the better.

But for the sake of completion here is an attempt to provide an answer purely based on regular expression.

To match GD[many] you can use:

/\vGD\[[^\[\]]*\]

To match GD[many] or GD[foo[bar]many[foo]bar]

\vGD\[[^\[\]]*(\[[^\[\]]*\][^\[\]]*)*\]

To match GD[many] or GD[foo[bar]many[foo]bar] or GD[foo[bar[many]foo]bar]

\vGD\[[^\[\]]*(\[[^\[\]]*\][^\[\]]*)*(\[[^\[\]]*(\[[^\[\]]*\][^\[\]]*)*\][^\[\]]*(\[[^\[\]]*\][^\[\]]*)*)*\]

Here is a recursive function that return the expression that match the 'inside' depending of the number of bracket that you want to allow.

function! SearchExpression(n)
  if a:n==0
    return '[^\[\]]*'
  else
    let expression = SearchExpression(a:n - 1)
    return expression . '(\[' . expression . '\]' . expression . ')*'
  endif
endfunction

You can use it in search mode:

:exe '/\vGD\[' . SearchExpression(2) . '\]'

Or in substitute mode:

:exe '/\vGD\[' . SearchExpression(1) . '\]/someStuff/'
:exe '/\vGD\[' . SearchExpression(2) . '\]/someOtherStuff/'