Could someone help me parse this string with regex?

Question

I'm not very good with regex, but here's what I got (the string to parse and the regex are on this page) http://rubular.com/r/iIIYDHkwVF

It just needs to match that exact test string

Please put the data for the question in this actual question. — Bryan Oakley, May 17 '11 at 11:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

2

The regular expression is

^"AddonInfo"$(\n\s*)+^\{\s*

It's looking for

^"AddonInfo"$ — a line containing only "AddonInfo"
(\n\s*)+ — followed by at least one newline and possibly many blank or empty lines
^\{\s* — and finally a line beginning with { followed by optional whitespace

To break down a regular expression into its component pieces, have a look at an answer that explains beginning with the basics.

To match the entire string, use

^"AddonInfo"$(\n\s*)+^\{(\s*".+?"\s+".+?"\s*\n)+^\}

So after the open curly, you're looking for one or more lines such that each contains a pair of quote-delimited simple strings (no escaping).

edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

Community

answered Jul 16 '10 at 16:14

Greg Bacon

Yeah I just wrote that but I cant figure out how to match all of the keys and values – RyanScottLewis Jul 16 '10 at 16:15
http://gskinner.com/RegExr/ is what I use and is very good for breaking down a regular expression – RyanScottLewis Jul 16 '10 at 16:22

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 16 '10 at 16:19

This one works:

^"AddonInfo"[^{]*{[^}]*}

Explanation:

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 16 '10 at 16:25

0

^"AddonInfo"(\s*)+^\{\s*(?:"([^"]+)"\s+"([^"]*)"\s+)+\}

You will get $1 to point into first key, $2 first value, $3 second key, $4, second value, and so on.

Notice that key is to be non-empty ("([^"]+"), but value may be empty (uses * instead of +).

answered Jul 16 '10 at 16:25

Piotr Kalinowski

3 Answers3