Matching delimited text, taking into account level

Question

I am looking for a way to replace

\cmd1{stuff \cmd2{other stuff}}

with

(stuff \cmd2{other stuff})

I have tried

:%s/\\cmd1{\(.\{-}\)}/(\1)/gc

However, this returns

(stuff \cmd2{other stuff)}

since the first } after { is taken because of \{-} -- taking the greedy version does not help, in the case that there is another } later on the line.

Is there a better expression to put inside {\( \)} so that \( \) encompasses everything up to the matching } to {?

Answer 1

Regular Expression

If you don't need to be able to support arbitrary levels of nesting, (if there's never a \cmd3 inside your \cmd2), then you can do this by incorporating the inner brackets into your expression, and matching "any character that's not a bracket" [^}] instead of "any character" .:

:%s/\\cmd1{\([^{]*{[^}]*}\)}/(\1)/gc

Macro Alternative

Otherwise, you can use a macro instead:

You're using the c confirm flag to inspect every change, so try the following:

1. /\\cmd1{<Cr>: Find the first \cmd1
2. qq: Start recording
3. dt{: delete the \cmd1
4. %: Jump to matching }
5. r)``r(: Replace curly brackets with round ones
6. n: Jump to next match
7. q: Stop recording

Then press @q to repeat the change, or n to skip this instance and jump to the next. After you've used @q at least once, you can use @@ as a faster shortcut.

If you actually don't want to review the changes as you make them, you can make the macro recursive by changing the recording steps 2–7 to:

qqqqqdt{%r)``r(n@qq

You can then invoke it a single time to make all the changes in one go: @q