Javascript split by spaces but not those in quotes

Question

The goal is to split a string at the spaces but not split the text data that is in quotes or separate that from the adjacent text.

The input is effectively a string

Answer 1

You could approach it slightly differently and use a Regular Expression to split where spaces are followed by word characters and a colon (rather than a space that's not in a quoted part):

var str = 'a:0 b:1 moo:"foo bar" c:2',
    arr = str.split(/ +(?=[\w]+\:)/g);
/* [a:0, b:1, moo:"foo bar", c:2] */

Demo jsFiddle

What's this Regex doing?
It looks for a literal match on the space character, then uses a Positive Lookahead to assert that the next part can be matched:
[\w]+ = match any word character [a-zA-Z0-9_] between one and unlimited times.
\: = match the : character once (backslash escaped).
g = global modifier - don't return on first match.

Demo Regex101 (with explanation)