Regex for nested {}

Chris c at cdot.de
Thu Jul 28 12:17:30 EDT 2005


hello,
I have a problem matching nested levels of {}, example:

 >>> import re
 >>> text = """
	outer {
		inner1 { ... }
		inner2 { ... }
	}
	simple { ... }
"""


 >>> r = re.compile(r"""
	(	# OPTION1
		.*?	# begin
		\{ 	# starting {
			(?: \{.*?\} )* 	# inner groups
		\}	# ending }
	)| 	# OR
	(	# OPTION2
		.*? { .*? }		# simple group may also happen
	)
	""", re.DOTALL|re.IGNORECASE|re.UNICODE|re.VERBOSE )


 >>> r.findall(text)

 >>> [('', '\n\touter { \n\t\tinner1 { ... }'), ('', ' \n\t\tinner2 { 
... }'), ('', '
  \n\t}\n\tsimple { ... }')]


the regex I currently use stops at the first closing } but what I am 
looking for is a result as:

[
"outer {
		inner1 { ... }
		inner2 { ... }
	}",
"simple { ... }"
]

is something like that possible?

thanks for any hint
chris



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