Is there a Regex-like that is capable of parsing matching symbols?

Question

This regular expression

/\\(.*\\)/

won\'t match the matching parenthesis but the last parenthesis in the string. Is there a regular expression

Answer 1

Given a string containing nested matching parentheses, you can either match the innermost sets with this (non-recursive JavaScript) regex:

var re = /\([^()]*\)/g;

Or you can match the outermost sets with this (recursive PHP) regex:

$re = '/\((?:[^()]++|(?R))*\)/';

But you cannot easily match sets of matching parentheses that are in-between the innermost and outermost.

Note also that the (naive and frequently encountered) expression: /\(.*?\)/ will always match incorrectly (neither the innermost nor outermost matched sets).