javascript - Regular expression to match brackets

Question

For a templating engine, I am using regular expressions to identify content under brackets in a string. For example the regex needs to match {key} or <tag> or [element].

Currently my regular expression looks like this:

var rx=/([[{<])([sS]+?)([]}>])]/;

The issue is that such a regular expression doesn't force brackets to match. For example in the following string:

[{lastName},{firstName}]

the regular expression will match [{lastName}

Is there a way to define matching brackets? Saying for example that if the opening bracket is a [ then the closing bracket must be a ], not a } or a >

Answer 1

The best way to do this, especially if different brackets can have different meanings, is to split into 3 regular expressions:

var rx1 = /[([^]]+)]/;
var rx2 = /(([^)]+))/;
var rx3 = /{([^}]+)}/;

These will match any text surrounded by [], (), and {} respectively, with the text inside in the first matched group.