How to Match The Inner Possible Result With Regular Expressions

Question

I have a regular expression to match anything between { and } in my string.

"/{.*}/"

Couldn't be simpler. The problem arises when I have a single line with multiple matches. So if I have a line like this:

this is my {string}, it doesn't {work} correctly

The regex will match

{string}, it doesn't {work}

rather than

{string}

How do I get it to just match the first result?

Answer 1

Use a character class that includes everything except a right bracket:

/{[^}]+}/

Answer 2

Question-mark means "non-greedy"

"/{.*?}/"

Answer 3

Default behaviour is greedy matching, i.e. first { to last }. Use lazy matching by the ? after your *.,

/{.*?}/

or even rather than * use "not a }"

/{[^}]*}/

Answer 4

this will work with single nested braces with only a depth of one: {(({.*?})*|.*?)*}

I'm not sure how to get infinite depth or if it's even possible with regex