Regex for splitting a string using space when not surrounded by single or double quotes

Question

I\'m new to regular expressions and would appreciate your help. I\'m trying to put together an expression that will split the example string using all spaces that are not s

Answer 1

String.split() is not helpful here because there is no way to distinguish between spaces within quotes (don't split) and those outside (split). Matcher.lookingAt() is probably what you need:

String str = "This is a string that \"will be\" highlighted when your 'regular expression' matches something.";
str = str + " "; // add trailing space
int len = str.length();
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("((\"[^\"]+?\")|('[^']+?')|([^\\s]+?))\\s++").matcher(str);

for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
{
    m.region(i, len);

    if (m.lookingAt())
    {
        String s = m.group(1);

        if ((s.startsWith("\"") && s.endsWith("\"")) ||
            (s.startsWith("'") && s.endsWith("'")))
        {
            s = s.substring(1, s.length() - 1);
        }

        System.out.println(i + ": \"" + s + "\"");
        i += (m.group(0).length() - 1);
    }
}

which produces the following output:

0: "This"
5: "is"
8: "a"
10: "string"
17: "that"
22: "will be"
32: "highlighted"
44: "when"
49: "your"
54: "regular expression"
75: "matches"
83: "something."