Regular Expression - Get text between double curly brackets and avoid escaped curly brackets

Question

I have been working in an AutoIt program which is supposed to receive variables declared into a .ini file. Later those variables can can called using double curly brackets "{{}}" and single curly brackets "{}". Here is an example.

Variable is defined by user as: VAR1 = "C:\MyDir\"
When user calls {{VAR1}} it receives "C:\\MyDir\\"
When user calls {VAR1} it receives "C:\MyDir\"

Double curly brackets replaces "\" for "\\"; single curly brackets gives only the actual variable value.

The problems are:

1) User may use curly brackets in variable definition: {VAR1} = "C:\MyDir\" Or {{VAR1}} = "C:\MyDir\" ...

2) User may write a text using curly brackets and call a variable inside the text:

My sample text {{{VAR1}}} my sample text.

User calls {VAR1} variable using the second {{VAR1}} curly bracket and want the result to be displayed inside the third curly bracket.

User expects this: "My sample text {C:\MyDir} my sample text."

To avoid the potential problems of this curly brackets recurssion I would like to define a rule to use escaped curly brackets "{" when user wants to write a real curly bracket and a non-escaped curly bracket when user is calling a variable.

Based on the previous explanation, I need a regular expression capable of resolving the following example:

\{{{\{VAR1\}}}\}

The escaped curly brackets must be ignored and function should return \{VAR1\} as the variable name. In this case variable "real" name is "{VAR1}".

I hope you can help me.

Best regards,

Aeolis

Answer 1

Thank you stribizhev for your correction and for the link to "regex101.com" (very good source for help). Yes, one solution to my problem is the pattern: (?<!\\)\{(?<!\\)\{(.*)(?<!\\)\}(?<!\\)\}

Thank you all!

Best regards,

Aeolis