QRegExp not working as expected

Question

I have a QPlainTextEdit and want to select specific text in it using QRegExp

here is example of a text block:

Block1 = Foo1 {
     bla bla bla;
     bla bla bla;
}

I need to select starting from = till } given the sub-string Foo1

Here is my code:

QString name = "Foo1";
QString pattern = "[\\=][\\s]" + name + "[\\s][\\{](^\\})*[\\}]";
//pattern = "[\=][\s]Foo1[\s][\{](^\})*[\}]"

and these lines for selection:

this->moveCursor(QTextCursor::Start);
this->document()->find(QRegExp(pattern));

and strangely, this select only Foo1 not

= Foo1 {
     bla bla bla;
     bla bla bla;
}

Answer 1

The problem

Here is your final regex for Foo1:

[\=][\s]Foo1[\s][\{](^\})*[\}]

And here is what QRegExp understands:

The solution

So here is what you should tell it:

=\s*Foo1\s*{[^}]+}

and what it'll understand:

There is more...

• In the solution I admit that no } can appear in the code. Otherwise, regex are not well suited for handling this case. If this happens in your context, you should rely on parser instead of regexes.
• Use Debuggex to visualize your regex.