How can i parse a comma delimited string into a list (caveat)?

Question

I need to be able to take a string like:

\'\'\'foo, bar, \"one, two\", three four\'\'\'

into:

[\'foo\', \'bar\', \'one, two         


        

Answer 1

You could do something like this:

>>> import re
>>> pattern = re.compile(r'\s*("[^"]*"|.*?)\s*,')
>>> def split(line):
...  return [x[1:-1] if x[:1] == x[-1:] == '"' else x
...          for x in pattern.findall(line.rstrip(',') + ',')]
... 
>>> split("foo, bar, baz")
['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
>>> split('foo, bar, baz, "blub blah"')
['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'blub blah']