Using a regex expression to parse information between brackets

Question

I am trying to parse information with regex, that is laid out in a style similar to json. Part of the problem I am having doing this involved identifying pairs of curly brackets.

group = {
    field = element
    innergroup = {
        field = element
        field = element
    }
    field = element
    innergroup = { field = element }
}

array = { field = element }

The first step in solving this problem is to identify the inner groups, bracketed off material that has no curly brackets between them. In the above example:

innergroup = {
    field = element
    field = element
}
#and
innergroup = { field = element }
#and
array = { field = element }

I have tried to find these inner groups by using a few different regex commands. This is the closest I got.

\{.*?\}

I know that it has something to do with the fact that the "." character means all characters except for line breaks. I also have to figure out a way to rule out characters that are either of the curly brackets.

[Update]

Previous questions have asked how to do this when the curly brackets are all on one line. However, this does not address this innergroup.

innergroup = {
    field = element
    field = element
}

The other questions also don't take into account the fact that there are many curly brackets, and thus other regex functions will find things like.

group = {
    field = element
    innergroup = {
        field = element
        field = element
    }

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

The [answer is already available here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/44708840/3832970). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 12 '18 at 06:25

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 11 '18 at 23:58

0

Use a negative character class:

\{[^{}]*?\}

[^{}] means “any character except a curly bracket” (escapes are not necessary).

See live demo.

answered Jul 11 '18 at 23:58

Bohemian

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Using a regex expression to parse information between brackets

1 Answers1