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

Answer 1

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).

Answer 2

This one works:

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

Explanation:

• ^"AddonInfo" matches "AddonInfo" in the beginning of a line
• [^{]* matches all the following non-{ characters
• { matches the following {
• [^}]* matches all the following non-} characters
• } matches the following }

Answer 3

^"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 +).