CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
eri0o
eri0o

Reputation: 2450

Getting text enclosed by curly brackets that also contain curly brackets in javascript

I have a textarea that contains a text string, I am getting its value to a variable named updatestring. I am getting the text in this text area that's enclosed by update(){ and }. This text goes into the variable updatecode. 

var updatestring = 'update(){\n//logic code here...\n\n\n}\n' ;
var updatecode = updatestring.match(/update\(\)\{([^}]+)\}/)[1];

The problem I have is that I want to be possible that the text enclosed by update(){ and } also contain the character }. In JavaScript, is there any easy way to do this without using a library?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 68

Answers (2)

James Wilkins
James Wilkins

Reputation: 7388

Edit: torazaburo's answer is better, but I'll leave this here to show another way just for educational purposes. ;)

Try this: /[^{]*{((?:.|\r|\n)*)}/

Example: https://regex101.com/r/QOIyvz/4

[^{]* - skips all characters until { is found and stops just before it.

{ - matches the first brace.

((?:.|\r|\n)*) - ?: starts a non-capturing group (will not be returned), and * "greedily" matches all characters and carriage return and line feeds, and makes them all part of a captured group (between the other ( and )) that is returned.

} - Regex will stop the greedy search to match the last one found.

Example: updatestring.match(/[^{]*{((?:.|\r|\n)*)}/)[1]

Upvotes: 2

user663031
user663031

Reputation:

Greedy matching (which is the default behavior of *) will skip over the intermediate } characters up to the last one, so nothing special is needed:

var updatestring = 'update(){\n//logic {embedded curly brackets}code here...\n\n\n}\n' ;    

var regexp = /{([^]*)}/;
//            ^                match starting curly
//             ^^^^^^          capture
//              ^^^            any character including newline
//                 ^           any number of times
//                   ^         match ending curly

var regexp = result = updatestring.match(regexp)[1];

console.log(updatestring, result);

The [^] will match everything including newlines.

By the way, why are you trying to parse something that looks like JavaScript using regexp?

Upvotes: 2

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