Question

I want to fetch text surrounded by some customized “brackets”, i.e.: {{…}} or @(…)@

when the brackets is only one character length (i.e.: {..}) , it is :

/{(.*?)}/g

and there is a more efficient solution, using “not-end-bracket” pattern:

/{([^}]*)}/g

but for two-characsters brackets, only this works

/{{(.*?)}}/g

I can’t find an efficient solution like the one in the one-character case.

Is there any?

Answer 1

I’m assuming you don’t need to worry about nesting. If you doo, you shouldn’t be using regular expressions.

Here’s a way to do what you want without using non-greedy matching (*?):

/{{([^}]|}[^}])*}}/g

In English:

• two curly braces
• some number of:
  • a non-curly-brace
  • or a curly brace followed by a non-curly-brace
• and two close curly braces

This generalizes out to n-curly braces by having n separate branches, one for non-curly, one for a curly and a non-curly, one for two curlies and a non-curly, etc.

In your special case you could just write:

/{{(}?[^}])*}}/g

BTW: the group probably doesn’t need to be capturing. eg:

/{{(?:}?[^}])*}}/g