CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netregexextracttoken
Rory Becker
Rory Becker

Reputation: 15701

How do I extract all {} tokens from a string using .Net's RegEx?

I need to extract tokens that are marked with curly brackets from a given string.

I have tried using Expresso to construct something that will parse...

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"{Token1}asdasasd{Token2}asd asdacscadase dfb db {Token3}"
-------------------------------------------------------------

and produce "Token1", "Token2", "Token3"

I tried using..

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({.+})
-------------------------------------------------------------

...but that seemed to match the entire expression.

Any thoughts?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 6021

Answers (4)

Evan Fosmark
Evan Fosmark

Reputation: 101671

Another solution:

(?<=\{)([^\}]+)(?=\})

This uses a lookahead and a lookbehind so the brackets aren't consumed at all.

Upvotes: 2

Godeke
Godeke

Reputation: 16281

Try

\{(.*?)\}

The \{ will escape the "{" (which has meaning in a RegEx).
The \} likewise escapes the closing } backet.
The .*? will take minimal data, instead of just .* 
which is "greedy" and takes everything it can.

If you have assurance that your tokens will (or need to) 
be of a specific format, you can replace .* with an appropriate 
character class. For example, in the likely case you 
want only words, you can use (\w*) in place of the (.*?) 
This has the advantage that closing } characters are not 
part of the class being matched in the inner expression, 
so you don't need the ? modifier).

Upvotes: 6

Brian Rasmussen
Brian Rasmussen

Reputation: 116401

Curly braces have special meaning in regular expressions, so you have to escape them. Use \{ and \} to match them.

Upvotes: 1

user7116
user7116

Reputation: 64068

Try:

\{([^}]*)\}

This will clamp the search inside of squiggly braces to stop on the closing brace.

Upvotes: 2

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