$re = '/^(?:.*?[\\\\\/])?app[\\\\\/]\w+[\\\\\/]|([^\\\\\/\n]+?)(?:\.rb$|([\\\\\/]))/m';
$str = 'app/service/namespace/important_thing/my_class.rb
D:\\app\\service\\namespace\\important_thing\\my_class.rb';
$subst = "<$1>[$2]";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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