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

A quick workaround could be pre-parse the commas inside the quotes and replace them with another delimiter, split the values and post-parse the values with the delimiter replacing it with the original commas.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

I found below is the easiest way, we can do it

string fruits = "Fruit,10,"Bananas, Oranges, Grapes"";
string[] fruitsArr = Regex.Split(fruits, ",(?=(?:[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*(?![^\"]*\"))");

Output:

fruitsArr[0] = "Fruit"
fruitsArr[1] = "10"
fruitsArr[2] = "\"Bananas, Oranges, Grapes\""

If you need pure string data so you can do it something like,

fruitsArr[2].Replace("\"", "")

Answer 4

if using c#, you can use

        string searchQuery = "Fruit,10,\"Bananas, Oranges, Grapes\"";
        List<string> list1 = Regex.Matches(searchQuery, @"(?<match>\w+)|\""(?<match>[\w\s,]*)""").Cast<Match>().Select(m => m.Groups["match"].Value).ToList();
        foreach(var v in list1)
        Console.WriteLine(v);

Output :

Fruit

10

Bananas, Oranges, Grapes