Getting text within another text

Question

I want to get a List(Of String) of text blocks, but there is a problem:

{ --isso é um bloco;
  echo "Aqui tem um } no meio";}

and would like to get that way:

--isso é um bloco;
echo "Aqui tem um } no meio";

but you’re coming back to my method:

--isso é um bloco;
echo "Aqui tem um 

and just there, there’s some way then to get several blocks except when they are inside the characters "..."?

Here’s my method code:

Dim tmpBlocks() As String = theFile.Split({"{"}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
Dim Blocks As New List(Of String)

For i As Integer = 0 To tmpBlocks.Length - 1
    Blocks.Add(tmpBlocks(i).Split(New [String]() {"}"}, 
    StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)(0))
Next

' Blocks é a variável de cara bloco

OBS: I accept answers in C#, VB and Regular Expressions (Regex).

Answer 1

Without knowing the grammar specification of your programming language, it is difficult to solve the general case - you should consider seriously stop everything you’re doing, pick up a book of compilers, a book of formal languages and automata, and afterward have studied both topics, study a library type ANTLR, which generates parsers for C# and Java.

---

If you absolutely insist on writing a compiler without studying the theory behind it, the first thing you need to know is that your language is not regular, but context-free, and therefore cannot be processed by regular expressions (Google has a lot of information if you want to study the subject).

You’ll need to do something along that line here if you make a point of writing the code in the box (and note that I did not handle escapes inside strings, {} inside {}, ...).