Splitting a string and ignoring the delimiter inside quotes

Question

I am using .NET\'s String.Split method to break up a string using commas, but I want to ignore strings enclosed in double quotes for the string. I have read that a

For

Answer 1

You are better off with a parser, like those mentioned in the comments. That said, it's possible to do it with regex in the following way:

,(?=(?:[^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)

The positive lookahead ((?= ... )) ensures that there is an even number of quotes ahead of the comma to split on (i.e. either they occur in pairs, or there are none).

[^"]* matches non-quote characters.