JS Regex to match everything inside braces (including nested braces): “{ I want this {and this} and this in one string }”

Question

Meaning that I simply want to strip the enclosing braces. I can match \"{ this kind of stuff }\" with:

\"{stuff}\".match(/{([^}]*)}/)[1]

Am

Answer 1

I agree with Lucero that Regexes are not made for that, but to answer your question:

The problem is that you match everything except }. But since the inside data you want to match contains itself a }, the content of the outer braces is not matched.

{
    var foo = {
        bar: 1
==> };

    var foo2 = {
        bar: 2    
==> };
}

You can use this regex:

{([\S\s]*)}

To explain:

{                   match opening {
    (               group
        [\S\s]      match everything, workaround for the missing s option in JS
              *     greedy, makes it match as much as possible
    )               end group
}                   match closing }