Question

I have an input field in a form that I have to check for certain markup that we have setup.

The delimiter is {!, }.

I would like to match everything that’s inside the delimiters.

content = /regex/g.exec('{!content}')

futher more the input string can have more than one markup in it.

input = '{!content} {!other}';
['content','other'] = /regex/g.exec('{!content} {!other}')

This is the first part of the problem, now it gets to the fun part.

I also have where certain markup delimiters are not ended correctly and I have to check for those also.

In this case I would like to get:

input = '{!content {!other} {!broken';
['{!content', 'other', '{!broken'] = /regex/g.exec(input);

Update * found a case where the orginal solution from @MikeM is not capturing something that I would like. If the starting delimiter is by itself, I need those to show up in the results array. If the starting delimiter is at the end of the string then it wont capture.

input = '{!content {!other} {!';
['{!content', 'other', '{!'] = /regex/g.exec(input);

Answer 1

You could use the following if { and } are not allowed in the content

var m,    
    result = [],
    str = '{!content {!other} {!broken',
    reg = /\{!([^{}]+)\}|(\{![^{}]+)/g;

while ( m = reg.exec( str ) ) {
    result.push( m[1] || m[2] );
}

console.log( result );   // [ "{!content ", "other", "{!broken" ]

It would though, grab the spaces following unclosed content.

Update:

To capture content without including any leading or trailing whitespace you could use the following – written in longer form for clarity.

var m,    
    result = [],
    str = '{!content {!other} {!broken  {!    broken {! content }',
    reg = /\{!\s*([^{}]+?)\s*\}|\{!\s*([^{}]+?)\s*(?=\{|$)/g;

m = reg.exec( str );

while ( m != null ) {   

    if ( m[1] != null ) {
        result.push( m[1] );
    } else {  // m[2] cannot be null
        result.push( '{!' + m[2] );
    }
    m = reg.exec( str );
}

console.log( result );   
// [ "{!content", "other", "{!broken", "content", "{!broken", "content" ]

For more on exec, see MDN exec.