Split string by commas ignoring any punctuation marks (including ',') in quotation marks

Question

How can I split string (from a textbox) by commas excluding those in double quotation marks (without getting rid of the quotation marks), along with other poss

Answer 1

This was trickier than I thought, a good practical problem I think.

Below is the solution I came up with for this. One thing I don't like about my solution is having to add double quotations back and the other one being names of the variables :p:

internal class Program
{
    private static void Main(string[] args)
    {

        string searchString =
            @"apple, orange, ""baboons, cows. dogs- hounds"", rainbow, ""unicorns, gummy bears"", abc, defghj";

        char delimeter = ',';
        char excludeSplittingWithin = '"';

        string[] splittedByExcludeSplittingWithin = searchString.Split(excludeSplittingWithin);

        List splittedSearchString = new List();

        for (int i = 0; i < splittedByExcludeSplittingWithin.Length; i++)
        {
            if (i == 0 || splittedByExcludeSplittingWithin[i].StartsWith(delimeter.ToString()))
            {
                string[] splitttedByDelimeter = splittedByExcludeSplittingWithin[i].Split(delimeter);
                for (int j = 0; j < splitttedByDelimeter.Length; j++)
                {
                    splittedSearchString.Add(splitttedByDelimeter[j].Trim());
                }
            }
            else
            {
                splittedSearchString.Add(excludeSplittingWithin + splittedByExcludeSplittingWithin[i] +
                                         excludeSplittingWithin);
            }
        }

        foreach (string s in splittedSearchString)
        {
            if (s.Trim() != string.Empty)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(s);
            }
        }
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}