How to Split Strings by Spaces While Preserving Quoted Sections Using Regex?

Splitting Strings Using Spaces When Not Surrounded by Quotes with Regex

In regular expression, it's possible to split a string using spaces while retaining spaces within quoted sections. Here's how to achieve this:

To address the issue in your original expression, (?!"), which splits on spaces before quotes, consider the following regular expression:

[^\s"']+|"([^"]*)"|'([^']*)'

This expression captures three patterns:

1. ¹ : Matches one or more non-whitespace, non-quote characters.
2. "(²*)": Matches a double-quoted string, capturing the string without quotes in group 1.
3. '(³*)': Matches a single-quoted string, capturing the string without quotes in group 2.

To split the string, you can use Java code like this:

List<String> matchList = new ArrayList<>();
Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("[^\s\"']+|\"([^\"]*)\"|'([^']*)'");
Matcher regexMatcher = regex.matcher(subjectString);
while (regexMatcher.find()) {
    if (regexMatcher.group(1) != null) {
        // Add double-quoted string without the quotes
        matchList.add(regexMatcher.group(1));
    } else if (regexMatcher.group(2) != null) {
        // Add single-quoted string without the quotes
        matchList.add(regexMatcher.group(2));
    } else {
        // Add unquoted word
        matchList.add(regexMatcher.group());
    }
}

This code builds a list of strings, stripping quotes from quoted words and preserving spaces within them.

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1. s"' ↩
2. " ↩
3. ' ↩

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