How to split a string by commas positioned outside of parenthesis?

Question

I got a string of such format:

\"Wilbur Smith (Billy, son of John), Eddie Murphy (John), Elvis Presley, Jane Doe (Jane Doe)\"

so basicly i

Answer 1

An attempt on human-readable regex:

import re

regex = re.compile(r"""
    # name starts and ends on word boundary
    # no '(' or commas in the name
    (?P\b[^(,]+\b)
    \s*
    # everything inside parentheses is a role
    (?:\(
      (?P[^)]+)
    \))? # role is optional
    """, re.VERBOSE)

s = ("Wilbur Smith (Billy, son of John), Eddie Murphy (John), Elvis Presley,"
     "Jane Doe (Jane Doe)")
print re.findall(regex, s)

Output:

[('Wilbur Smith', 'Billy, son of John'), ('Eddie Murphy', 'John'), 
 ('Elvis Presley', ''), ('Jane Doe', 'Jane Doe')]