Splitting by a semicolon not surrounded by quote signs

Question

Well, hello community. I\'m workin\' on a CSV decoder in PHP (yeah, I know there\'s already one, but as a challenge for me, since I\'m learning it in my free time). Now the prob

Answer 1

Split is not a good choice for csv type lines.
You could use the old tried and true \G anchor with a find globally type func.

Practical

Regex: '~\G(?:(?:^|;)\s*)(?|"([^"]*)"|([^;]*?))(?:\s*(?:(?=;)|$))~'

Info:

 \G                            # G anchor, start where last match left off
 (?:                           # leading BOL or ;
      (?: ^ | ; )
      \s*                           # optional whitespaces
 )
 (?|                           # branch reset
      " 
      ( [^"]* )                     # (1), double quoted string data
      "
   |                              # or
      ( [^;]*? )                    # (1), non-quoted field
 )
 (?:                           # trailing optional whitespaces
      \s* 
      (?:
           (?= ; )                       # lookahead for ;
        |  $                             # or EOL
      )
 )