I have several files that look like this :

universe = {
    ["stars"] = {
        ["Sun"] = {
            ["planets"] = "9",
            ["life"] = "Yes",
            ["asteroid"] = "9001"
        },
        ["Alpha Centauri"] = {
            ["planets"] = "3",
            ["life"] = "No",
            ["asteroid"] = "20"
        },
        ["Rigel"] = {
            ["planets"] = "5",
            ["life"] = "No",
            ["asteroid"] = "11"
        }
    }
}

For example, my intention is to find every block where [“life”] equals “No”. I realized if it could be handled better in a database (or something with structure), but I’m not sure how to convert that data into that.

I

have a bunch of files in this format and I want to run a command to show the part where the condition is true (up to the direct parent parenthesis), so for the previous example I’d love to get:

        ["Alpha Centauri"] = {
            ["planets"] = "3",
            ["life"] = "No",
            ["asteroid"] = "20"
        },
        ["Rigel"] = {
            ["planets"] = "5",
            ["life"] = "No",
            ["asteroid"] = "11"
        }

Can this be done with GREP? Or is there another tool that can do something like this?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Edit

Example 2: https://regex101.com/r/jO9dU5/1

Try this Lua program:

local function find(w,t,p)
    for k,v in pairs(t) do
        if v==w then
            print(p..".".. k)
        elseif type(v)=="table" then
            find(w,v,p..".".. k)
        end
    end
end

find("No",universe,"universe")

Add the definition of universe before this code.

If you really want to do text processing, try this :

S=[[
universe = {
...
}
]]

for w in S:gmatch('%b[] = {[^{]-"No".-},?') do
    print(w)
end