String split by certain condition

Question

I'd like to split this string by ' ' only if it has ':':

"A:Hey B:Are C:You there"

C:You there should be not split. The result should be:

["A:Hey", "B:Are", "C:You there"]

How can I do this?

Answer 1

\s+(?=\S*:)

You can split by this.

See demo.

https://regex101.com/r/hF7zZ1/4

This basically use a lookahead to make sure that the space which is being split upon is followed by non space characters and : .So it will work as you want.