How to split string while ignoring portion in parentheses?

Question

I have a string that I want to split into an array by using the commas as delimiters. I do not want the portions of the string that is between parentheses to be split thoug

Answer 1

I don't like to have large opaque regular expressions in my code so I used a different solution. It still makes use of regex but I think is somewhat more transparent.

I use a simpler regex to replace any commas within parenthesis with a special string. I then split the string by commas, then within each resulting token I replace the special string with a comma.

    splitIgnoreParens(str: string): string[]{
    const SPECIAL_STRING = '$REPLACE_ME';

    // Replaces a comma with the special string
    const replaceComma = s => s.replace(',',SPECIAL_STRING);
    // Vice versa
    const replaceSpecialString = s => s.replace(SPECIAL_STRING,',');

    // Selects any text within parenthesis
    const parenthesisRegex = /\(.*\)/gi;

    // Withing all parenthesis, replace comma with special string.
    const cleanStr = str.replace(parenthesisRegex, replaceComma);
    const tokens = cleanStr.split(',');
    const cleanTokens = tokens.map(replaceSpecialString);

    return cleanTokens;
}