Matching balanced parenthesis in Perl regex

Question

I have an expression which I need to split and store in an array:

aaa=\"bbb{ccc}ffffd\" { aa=\"bb,cc\" { a=\"b\", c=\"d\" } }, aaa=\"bbb{}\" { aa=\"b}b\" }, aa         


        

Answer 1

There's an example in perlre, using the recursive regex features introduced in v5.10. Although you are limited to v5.8, other people coming to this question should get the right solution :)

$re = qr{ 
            (                                # paren group 1 (full function)
                foo
                (                            # paren group 2 (parens)
                    \(
                        (                    # paren group 3 (contents of parens)
                            (?:
                                (?> [^()]+ ) # Non-parens without backtracking
                                |
                                (?2)         # Recurse to start of paren group 2
                            )*
                        )
                    \)
                )
            )
    }x;