Regular expression to change string between curly brackets

Question

I have a file and I want to change text inside it with regex.

"code": {
  "restore": 1,
  "restore_on_startup": true,
},

I want to change the text between

"code": {

and

},

I tried something like

Regex.Replace(subject, @"?xxx.*?yyy", "Replace");

But as my text contains new lines, it didn't work.

Answer 1

use

(.|\\r|\\n)*? 

instead of

.*?

or use the multiline property in the RegexOptions class

Answer 2

This regex should work for your seample, it will replace everything inside the brackets

Regex.Replace(subject,"(?<=\"code\":\\s{).*?(?=},)", "replace", RegexOptions.Singleline);

"code": { "restore": 1, "restore_on_startup": true, },

will yield

"code": {replace},

The regex is basically saying match everything that is prefixed with "code": { and is suffixed with }, then replace everything inside with my replace . You may need to tweak it to suit your needs.

Answer 3

I'd suggest you go line by line searching for "code": { .

That found, from the same line start looking for } . (Beware to look after the code part in the first line, because there may be a } before the code )

Go storing all lines with a List<string> Add until you find the } .

After that, concat all lines you found in a single string, do the replacement. Remove all those lines from file and add the new formed string.