CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexnsregularexpression
Julian F. Weinert
Julian F. Weinert

Reputation: 7560

RegEx exclude matches between quotes

I'm trying to exclude matches within quotes in RegEx. This String is my subject:

ONEKEY=VAL1, TWOKEY=VAL2, THREEKEY="VAL3.1, VAL3.2", FOURKEY=VAL4

I want to split this string (using NSRegularExpression in Mac OS) and get an associative array. To make it easier I first wanted to split the string into KEY=VALUE pairs and either easily explode them by = or use another RegEx in my iteration. My problem now is that I can't get exclusion of the quoted values work. Here is my RegEx:

(?=(.))([^,\s]*)

I already tried something like this: (?=(.))([^"])?([^,\s]*)([^"])? and (?=([^"]?.[^"]?))([^,\s]*)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2555

Answers (1)

Bernhard Barker
Bernhard Barker

Reputation: 55609

How about finding:

([^=]+)=("[^"]*"|[^,]+)(?:,\s*)?

Then extract group 1 (the key) and 2 (the value(s)).

[^=]+ - one or more characters that aren't =.
"[^"]*" - any characters between quotes.
[^,]+ - one or more characters that aren't ,.
(?:,\s*)? - consume the , with any spaces after it (the only difference between (...) and (?:...) is that the latter doesn't assign a group to it).

This won't work if brackets can be nested.

Test.

Upvotes: 2

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