Question: I don't usually use regular expressions, hence my question. I need a regex to match the following:

```
'{any-string}'.

```

Any assistance appreciated.

Answer: 
The most simple expression would be:

```
/{(.*?)}/

```

If you expect more complex strings (for example, some kind of escape sequence where the `{` and `}` characters are allowed within the string) it could be more complex. For instance, with a `\` (backslash) escape sequence:

```
/{((?:\\.|[^}])*)}/

```

Edit: That's not tested, but the general idea is that the expression will swallow any character following the escape rather than ensuring it isn't the closing brace.
To replace anything in `{ }` with what `file_get_contents` returns you can do:

```
$page = file_get_contents('some_file_name or some_url');
$str = '.....{...}....';
$str = preg_replace('/{[^}]*}/',"$page",$str);

```