capturing multiple instances of a pattern

I have a string:

{value1}+{value2}-{value3}*{value...n}

using a regular expression, I want to capture each of the bracketed values as well as the operators in between them and I do not know how many brackets there will be.

I tried:

/(\{.*\}).*([\+|\-|\*|\/])*/mgU

but that is just getting me the values and not the operators. Where did I go wrong?

Solution

You can validate the string first with

/\A ({ [^{}]* }) (?: [\/+*-] (?1))* \z/x

Details:

\A - start of string
({[^{}]*}) - Group 1: a {, any zero or more chars other than { and } and then a } char
(?:[\/+*-](?1))* - zero or more occurrences of a /, +, * or - char and then the Group 1 pattern
\z - end of string.

Then, you may collect individual matches with

/ { [^{}]* } | [\/+*-] /gx

This regex matches all occurrences of any substrings between { and } (with {[^{}]*}) or /, +, * or - chars (with [\/+*-]).

See a complete demo script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
 
my $text = "{value1}+{value2}-{value3}*{value...n}";
 
if ($text =~ /\A ({ [^{}]* }) (?: [\/+*-] (?1))* \z/x) {
    while($text =~ / { [^{}]* } | [\/+*-] /gx) {
        print "$&\n";
    }
}

Output:

{value1}
+
{value2}
-
{value3}
*
{value...n}