Regular expression for parsing name value pairs

Question

Can someone provide a regular expression for parsing name/value pairs from a string? The pairs are separated by commas, and the value can optionally be enclosed in quotes.

Answer 1

This is how I would do it if you can use Perl 5.10.

qr/
  (?
    (?:
      [^=,\\]
    |
      (?&escape)
    )++ # Prevent null keys
  )

  \s*+
  =
  \s*+

  (?
    (?"ed)
  |
    (?:
      [^=,\s\\]
    |
      (?&escape)
    )++ # Prevent null value ( use quotes for that )
  )

  (?(DEFINE)
    (?\\.)
    (?
      "
        (?:
          (?&escaped)
        |
          [^"\\]
        )*+
      "
    )
  )
/x

The elements would be accessed through %+.

perlretut was very helpful in creating this answer.