Python: Split a string, respect and preserve quotes [duplicate]

Answer 1

>>> s = r'a=foo, b=bar, c="foo, bar", d=false, e="false", f="foo\", bar"'
>>> re.findall(r'(?:[^\s,"]|"(?:\\.|[^"])*")+', s)
['a=foo', 'b=bar', 'c="foo, bar"', 'd=false', 'e="false"', 'f="foo\\", bar"']

1. The regex pattern "[^"]*" matches a simple quoted string.
2. "(?:\\.|[^"])*" matches a quoted string and skips over escaped quotes because \\. consumes two characters: a backslash and any character.
3. [^\s,"] matches a non-delimiter.
4. Combining patterns 2 and 3 inside (?: | )+ matches a sequence of non-delimiters and quoted strings, which is the desired result.

Answer 2

Regex can solve this easily enough:

import re

mystring = 'a=foo, b=bar, c="foo, bar", d=false, e="false"'

splitString = re.split(',?\s(?=\w+=)',mystring)

The regex pattern here looks for a whitespace followed by a word character and then an equals sign which splits your string as you desire and maintains any quotes.