Get inside of parent blocks in php regex

Question

hello i have 2 parent (or more ...) block and many child blocks inside them.

Block1 {

    blockchild1 {

    }

    blockchild2 {

    }

    , ...
}

Block2 {

    blockchild1 {

    }

    blockchild2 {

    }

    , ...
}

i want to use php regex and get first all parents blocks inside

([a-z-0-9]*)\s*[{](.*?)[}]

but this regex stop when arrive to first childblock close } means first data receive is

Block1 {

    blockchild1 {

    }

but i want to get some thing like this

array 1 = Block1
array 2 = blockchild1 {

    }

    blockchild2 {

    }

    , ...

i want the regex pass child blocks [}] and get everything inside of parents block. my regex is PCRE (PHP)

Answer 1

You need to use a recursive pattern:

$pattern = '~(\w+)\s*{([^{}]*(?:{(?2)}[^{}]*)*)}~';

details:

~ # delimiter
(\w+) # capture group 1: block name
\s* # eventual whitespaces
{
(   # capture group 2
    [^{}]* # all that isn't a curly bracket
    (?:
        { (?2) } # reference to the capture group 2 subpattern
        [^{}]*
    )*
)
}
~

Note that the reference to the capture group 2 is inside the capture group 2 itself, that's why the pattern is recursive.