正则表达式仅匹配不以“）”结尾的字符串

Question

I have a plist file that has nested properties. I need to get the text immediately after the open "(", this is the "Name". I can do this fine, However, because there are nested properties, when my C# logic iterates over the lines in the plist, the name gets overwritten by the next property. Is there a way to only match an exact pattern; specifically do not match any part of a string ends with a ")"

 : (MyNameHere                //Match
           : (propertyone)    // do not match, because it ends with ")" 

here is the Regex I am using to match the name.

:\s\(([a-z,A-Z,0-9,-_]+)

I am using C#.net 4.5

Thanks

Answer 1

I don't know what you are exactly trying to do but I suspect that balancing groups will interest you: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bs2twtah%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

If you want to match a line that doesn't end with and not contain a closing parenthesis, you can use this pattern:

(?>[^\n)]*)(?!\))

details:

(?>...) # is an atomic group that prevents the regex engine to backtrack
(?!\))  # is a negative lookahead (not followed by ...) to check there
        # is not parenthesis after

The important thing is that * (as all other quantifiers) is greedy by default.

About atomic groups

If you want to allow lines that can contain a closing parenthesis but can't end with a closing parenthesis:

(?m)^.*(?<!\))$

Answer 2

You need to add a positive lookahead assertion at the last if you don't want any other space character following [\\w-]+ . (?=\\s|$) positive lookahead which asserts that the match must be followed by a space character or end of the line anchor.

@":\s\(([\w-]+)(?=\s|$)"

Use \\s if necessary or otherwise @":\\s\\(([\\w-]+)$ would be enough.

DEMO