Can regular expressions be used to match nested pa

Question

Is it possible to write a regular expression that matches a nested pattern that occurs an unknown number of times? For example, can a regular expression match an opening and closing brace when there are an unknown number of open/close braces nested within the outer braces?

For example:

public MyMethod()
{
  if (test)
  {
    // More { }
  }

  // More { }
} // End

Should match:

{
  if (test)
  {
    // More { }
  }

  // More { }
}

Answer 1

Using the recursive matching in the PHP regex engine is massively faster than procedural matching of brackets. especially with longer strings.

http://php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.recursive.php

e.g.

$patt = '!\( (?: (?: (?>[^()]+) | (?R) )* ) \)!x';

preg_match_all( $patt, $str, $m );

vs.

matchBrackets( $str );

function matchBrackets ( $str, $offset = 0 ) {

    $matches = array();

    list( $opener, $closer ) = array( '(', ')' );

    // Return early if there's no match
    if ( false === ( $first_offset = strpos( $str, $opener, $offset ) ) ) {
        return $matches;
    }

    // Step through the string one character at a time storing offsets
    $paren_score = -1;
    $inside_paren = false;
    $match_start = 0;
    $offsets = array();

    for ( $index = $first_offset; $index < strlen( $str ); $index++ ) {
        $char = $str[ $index ];

        if ( $opener === $char ) {
            if ( ! $inside_paren ) {
                $paren_score = 1;
                $match_start = $index;
            }
            else {
                $paren_score++;
            }
            $inside_paren = true;
        }
        elseif ( $closer === $char ) {
            $paren_score--;
        }

        if ( 0 === $paren_score ) {
            $inside_paren = false;
            $paren_score = -1;
            $offsets[] = array( $match_start, $index + 1 );
        }
    }

    while ( $offset = array_shift( $offsets ) ) {

        list( $start, $finish ) = $offset;

        $match = substr( $str, $start, $finish - $start );
        $matches[] = $match;
    }

    return $matches;
}

Answer 2

No, you are getting into the realm of Context Free Grammars at that point.

Answer 3

Using regular expressions to check for nested patterns is very easy.

'/(\((?>[^()]+|(?1))*\))/'

Answer 4

This seems to work: /(\{(?:\{.*\}|[^\{])*\})/m

Answer 5

The Pumping lemma for regular languages is the reason why you can't do that.

The generated automaton will have a finite number of states, say k, so a string of k+1 opening braces is bound to have a state repeated somewhere (as the automaton processes the characters). The part of the string between the same state can be duplicated infinitely many times and the automaton will not know the difference.

In particular, if it accepts k+1 opening braces followed by k+1 closing braces (which it should) it will also accept the pumped number of opening braces followed by unchanged k+1 closing brases (which it shouldn't).

Answer 6

No. You need a full-blown parser for this type of problem.