Regex to capture key-value comma-separated values

Question

I'm trying to write a regular expression to parse the values out of Unrealscript serialized objects. Part of that involves lines like this:

(X=32.69,Y='123.321',Z="A string with commas, just to complicate things!",W=Class'Some.Class')

The resultant capture should be:

[
    {
        'X':32.69,
        'Y':'A string with commas, just to complicate things!',
        'Z':'Class\'Some.Class\'
    }
]

What I want is to be able to distinguish between the key (eg. X) and the value (eg. Class\'Some.Class\').

Here is a pattern I've tried so far, just to capture a simple set of values (currently doesn't try to handle commas inside values, for now):

Pattern

\(((\S?)=(.+),?)+\)

Data set

(X=32,Y=3253,Z=12.21)

Result

https://regex101.com/r/gT9uU3/1

I'm still a novice with these regular expressions and any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can try this regex to associate key and value pairs:

(?!^\()([^=,]+)=([^\0]+?)(?=,[^,]+=|\)$)

Regex live here.

Explaining:

(?!^\()         # do not match the initial '(' character

([^=,]+)        # to match the key .. we take all from the last comma
=               # till the next '=' character

([^\0]+?)       # any combination '[^\0]' - it will be the key's value
                  # at least one digit '+'
                  # but stops in the first occurrence '?'

(?=             # What occurrence?

    ,[^,]+=     # a comma ',' and a key '[^,]+='
                  # important: without the key:
                  # the occurrence will stop in the first comma
                  # that should or should not be the delimiter-comma 

    |\)$        # OR '|':  the value can also be the last one
                  # which has not another key in sequence,
                  # so, we must accept the value
                  # which ends '$' in ')' character

)               # it is all

Hope it helps.

Sorry my English, feel free to edit my explanation, or let me know in the comments. =)