Wordpress Invalid Range In Character Class After Update - php

Question

I have a problem about Visual Compser Backend not showing any elements, it only shows the code in the classic mode editor.
See Screenshot
Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 11 in /home/customer/www/******.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/js_composer/include/autoload/hook-vc-grid.php on line 162
This is line 162
preg_match_all( "/$pattern/", $post->post_content, $found ); // fetch only needed shortcodes
```public function gridSavePostSettingsId( array $settings, $post_id, $post ) {
$pattern = $this->getShortcodeRegexForId();
preg_match_all( "/$pattern/", $post->post_content, $found ); // fetch only needed shortcodes
$settings['vc_grid_id'] = array();
if ( is_array( $found ) && ! empty( $found[0] ) ) {
$to_save = array();
if ( isset( $found[1] ) && is_array( $found[1] ) ) {
foreach ( $found[1] as $key => $parse_able ) {
if ( empty( $parse_able ) || '[' !== $parse_able ) {
$id_pattern = '/' . $this->grid_id_unique_name . '\:([\w-_]+)/';
$id_value = $found[4][ $key ];
preg_match( $id_pattern, $id_value, $id_matches );
if ( ! empty( $id_matches ) ) {
$id_to_save = $id_matches[1];
// why we need to check if shortcode is parse able?
// 1: if it is escaped it must not be displayed (parsed)
// 2: so if 1 is true it must not be saved in database meta
$shortcode_tag = $found[2][ $key ];
$shortcode_atts_string = $found[3][ $key ];
/** #var $atts array */
$atts = shortcode_parse_atts( $shortcode_atts_string );
$content = $found[6][ $key ];
$data = array(
'tag' => $shortcode_tag,
'atts' => $atts,
'content' => $content,
);
$to_save[ $id_to_save ] = $data;
}
}
}
}
if ( ! empty( $to_save ) ) {
$settings['vc_grid_id'] = array( 'shortcodes' => $to_save );
}
}
return $settings;
}```
I tried disabling all plug-ins and rollback wordpress version but still the same.
Is this problem related to the warning above? I know very little about coding. Please point me in the right direction.
Thank you!

Answer 1

Exactly same problem back-end mode didn't show any elements and /hook-vc-grid.php on line 162 error. " [\w-_] is wrong, it must be [\w-] " this helps only dissappear error but not solution for not showing elements.
Edit: php 7.1 works. It solved elements thing also.
Thank you guys

Answer 2

All hyphen '-' characters (that are not used as a range character) should be escaped '\-' as of PHP 7.3 so that it will NOT be treated anymore as a range character. Therefor the following WordPress function needs to be changed this way to make this expression work the same again:
private function getShortcodeRegexForId() {
return '\\[' // Opening bracket
. '(\\[?)' // 1: Optional second opening bracket for escaping shortcodes: [[tag]]
. '([\\w\-_]+)' // 2: Shortcode name
. '(?![\\w\-])' // Not followed by word character or hyphen