Splitting strings in python

Question

I have a string which is like this:

this is [bracket test] "and quotes test "

I'm trying to write something in Python to split it up by space while ignoring spaces within square braces and quotes. The result I'm looking for is:

['this','is','bracket test','and quotes test ']

Answer 1

Here's a simplistic solution that works with your test input:

import re
re.findall('\[[^\]]*\]|\"[^\"]*\"|\S+',s)

This will return any code that matches either

• a open bracket followed by zero or more non-close-bracket characters followed by a close bracket,
• a double-quote followed by zero or more non-quote characters followed by a quote,
• any group of non-whitespace characters

This works with your example, but might fail for many real-world strings you may encounter. For example, you didn't say what you expect with unbalanced brackets or quotes,or how you want single quotes or escape characters to work. For simple cases, though, the above might be good enough.

Answer 2

To complete Bryan post and match exactly the answer :

>>> import re
>>> txt = 'this is [bracket test] "and quotes test "'
>>> [x[1:-1] if x[0] in '["' else x for x in re.findall('\[[^\]]*\]|\"[^\"]*\"|\S+', txt)]
['this', 'is', 'bracket test', 'and quotes test ']

Don't misunderstand the whole syntax used : This is not several statments on a single line but a single functional statment (more bugproof).