C# Regex.Match curly brackets- contents only? (exclude braces)

Question

I've been unable to find an answer on this: can I use the Regex.Matches method to return only the contents of items with curly braces?

If I use the Regex ({[^}]*}) my MatchCollection values includes the braces. I want to match, but then only return the contents. Here's what I have so far:

Regex regex = new Regex(({[^}]*}), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase); MatchCollection matches = regex.Matches("Test {Token1} {Token 2}"); // Results include braces (undesirable) var results = matches.Cast<Match>().Select(m => m.Value).Distinct().ToList(); 

Answer 1

I always liked it explicit. So you can use "positive lookbehind" (?<=...) and "positive lookahead" (?=...) groups:

(?<=\{) [^}]* (?=\}) 

which means:

• require opening curly bracket before match
• collect text (of, course) - as commented before I may be [^{}]* as well
• require closing curly bracket after match