$re = '/\[([0-9]+)\]/m';
$str = 'Other conventions introduced by Doyle include the arch-criminal who is too clever for the official police to defeat, like Holmes\'s adversary Professor Moriarty, and the use of forensic science to solve cases.[1]
The Sherlock Holmes stories established crime fiction as a respectable genre popular with readers of all backgrounds, and Doyle\'s success inspired many contemporary detective stories.[174] Holmes influenced the creation of other "eccentric gentleman detective" characters, like Agatha Christie\'s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, introduced in 1920.[175]';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php