sed or awk, removing curly brackets but only if there are no commas inside brackets

Question

i have this string:

ex00/{ft_strdup.c} ex04/{ft_convert_base.c,ft_convert_base2.c} ex05/{ft_split.c}

need to remove with sed the curly brackets if there is no comma inside brackets, so desired output:

ex00/ft_strdup.c ex04/{ft_convert_base.c,ft_convert_base2.c} ex05/ft_split.c

to explain what is task of script: i have a txt file and inside it have such lines:

Turn-in directory: ex06/

Files to turn in: ft_this.c, ft_that.h

Turn-in directory: ex07/

Files to turn in: ft_test.c

now I need to create these files with touch

files=$(cat subject.txt \
| grep "Turn-in directory\|Files to turn in" \
| tr -d ' ' \
| awk -F: '{print $2 "}"}' \
| tr -d '\n' \
| sed 's/ex/ ex/g' \
| sed 's/\//\/\{/g' \
| sed 's/{}/{/g')

eval "touch $files"

Answer 1

With your shown samples please try following awk code. Written and tested in GNU awk .

awk -v RS='{[^}]*}' '
RT{
  if(!sub(/,/,"&",RT)){ gsub(/^{|}$/,"",RT) }
}
{ ORS=RT }
1
END{ print "" }
'  Input_file

Answer 2

Using sed

$ sed -E 's/\{([[:alpha:]_.]+)}/\1/g' input_file
touch ex00/ft_strdup.c ex04/{ft_convert_base.c,ft_convert_base2.c} ex05/ft_split.c

Answer 3

Using any sed:

$ sed 's/{\([^,}]*\)}/\1/g' file
ex00/ft_strdup.c ex04/{ft_convert_base.c,ft_convert_base2.c} ex05/ft_split.c

Note that the above will work no matter which characters except , , { , } , or \n exist in your file names, eg these are all valid file names:

$ cat file
ex00/{ft_strdup1.c} ex05/{ft-split.c} ex05/{ft=s&pl#it.c}

$ sed 's/{\([^,}]*\)}/\1/g' file
ex00/ft_strdup1.c ex05/ft-split.c ex05/ft=s&pl#it.c

If your file names can contain any of the characters I mentioned above as excluded then ask a new question including those in your sample input/output.

Answer 4

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed 's/{\([^,]*\)}/\1/g' file

Match globally on a pair of curly braces only when the contents between them does not contain a comma and replace the match by the contents.