Regex for Extracting Custom Log Entry Fields - implementing Nested Brackets
Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm working on a project where I need to parse log entries that have a custom format. Each log entry looks something like this: `[INFO] [2023-10-01 12:00:00] [User: John Doe] [Action: [Login]]`. I need to extract the user and action fields while properly handling cases where the action might contain nested brackets. Here's the regex I've been trying: ```python import re log_pattern = r'\[User: (.*?)\] \[Action: (\[.*?\])\]' log_entry = '[INFO] [2023-10-01 12:00:00] [User: John Doe] [Action: [Login]]' match = re.search(log_pattern, log_entry) if match: user = match.group(1) action = match.group(2) print(f'User: {user}, Action: {action}') else: print('No match found') ``` The question is that when I run this, I get the output `User: John Doe, Action: [[Login]]` instead of just `[Login]`. I suspect it's due to how I'm handling the nested brackets. I've tried various alternations and quantifiers, but nothing seems to work. Could someone guide to refine this regex to properly capture the nested structure while ensuring performance remains optimal? I'm using Python 3.10 and the regex library seems to be functioning as expected, but I'm just not achieving the desired results. Any insights into best practices for this type of scenario would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is macOS. Any ideas what could be causing this?