Regex to remove spaces inside braces

Question

I have many files with the many of the following forms:

export function foo(payload={}) {
  return { type: bar, payload };
}

I would like to do a regex-replace that removes the spaces between the brackets so that the above becomes (note the removed spaces in the return clause):

export function foo(payload={}) {
  return {type: bar, payload};
}

In regex-builder I can get matches with the following:

"{ \\(.*?\\) }"

But when I try to do any kind of regex-replace across the file, with a replace pattern like {\1} I get 0 matches.

Flummoxed.

Answer 1

First be sure that your cursor is before the region you want to work on or that you highlight it.

{ +\(.*\) +}

worked for me.