正则表达式匹配不在引号或转义引号中的字符

Question

Hi I'm trying to write a regex statement to match a " { " character only if it is not in cased in quotes.

I then need to return (replace line) with everything (if anything) to the right of the character.

Similarly I need to do the same with the " } " character but return everything on the left. These need to be separate regex.

As an example:

if { something

Should MATCH and return " something "

if { " something

Should MATCH and return " " something "

" if { " something

Should NOT MATCH and not return anything

Answer 1

Unfortunately this isn't something the .Net implementation of regex can do without running into edge cases. You'll need to use a parser to do it properly. A basic state machine pattern where that iterates along the string and flips state when it hits the characters you're looking for.