RegEx - is recursive substitution possible using only a RegEx engine? Conditional search replace

Question

I'm editing some data, and my end goal is to conditionally substitute , (comma) chars with .(dot). I have a crude solution working now, so this question is strictly for suggestions on better methods in practice, and determining what is possible with a regex engine outside of an enhanced programming environment.

I gave it a good college try, but 6 hours is enough mental grind for a Saturday, and I'm throwing in the towel. :)

I've been through about 40 SO posts on regex recursion, substitution, etc, the wiki.org on the definitions and history of regex and regular language, and a few other tutorial sites. The majority is centered around Python and PHP.

The working, crude regex (facilitating loops / search and replace by hand):

(^.*)(?<=\()(.*?)(,)(.*)(?=\))(.*$)

A snip of the input:

room_ass=01:macro_id=01: name=Left, pgm_audio=0, usb=0, list=(1*,3,5,7,),
room_ass=01:macro_id=02: name=Right, pgm_audio=1, usb=1, list=(2*,4,6,8,),
room_ass=01:macro_id=03: name=All, pgm_audio=1, list=(1,2*,3,4,5,6,7,8,),

And the desired output:

room_ass=01: macro_id=01: name=Left, pgm_audio=0, usb=0, list=(1*.3.5.7.),
room_ass=01: macro_id=02: name=Right, pgm_audio=1, usb=1, list=(2*.4.6.8.),
room_ass=01: macro_id=03: name=All, pgm_audio=1, list=(1.2*.3.4.5.6.7.8.),

That's all. Just replace the , with ., but only inside ( ).

This is one conceptual (not working) method I'd like to see, where the middle group<3> would loop recursively:

(^.*)(?<=\()([^,]*)([,|\d|\*]\3.*)(?=\))(.*$)
                   (          ^  )      

..where each recursive iteration would shift across the data, either 1 char or 1 comma at a time:

room_ass=01:macro_id=01: name=Left, pgm_audio=0, usb=0, list=(1*,3,5,7,),
                                                      iter 1-|  ^      |
                                                           2-|    ^    |
                                                           3-|      ^  |
                                                           4-|        ^|

or A much simpler approach would be to just tell it to mask/select all , between the (), but I struck out on figuring that one out. I use text editors a lot for little data editing tasks like this, so I'd like to verify that SublimeText can't do it before I dig into Python.

All suggestions and criticisms welcome. Be gentle. <--#n00b Thanks in advance! -B

Answer 1

Not much magic needed. Just check, if there's a closing ) ahead, without any ( in between.

,(?=[^)(]*\))

See this demo at regex101

However it does not check for an opening (. It's a common approach and probably a dulicate.