Splitting at space if not between quotes

Question

i tried this:

 +|(?!(\"[^"]*\"))

but it didn't work. what can i else do to make it work? btw im using java's string.split().

Answer 1

Try this:

[ ]+(?=([^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)

which will split on one or more spaces only if those spaces are followed by zero, or an even number of quotes (all the way to the end of the string!).

The following demo:

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String text = "a \"b c d\" e \"f g\" h";
        System.out.println("text = " + text + "\n");
        for(String t : text.split("[ ]+(?=([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*[^\"]*$)")) {
            System.out.println(t);
        }
    }
}

produces the following output:

text = a "b c d" e "f g" h

a
"b c d"
e
"f g"
h