How Can C# Regex Split Strings with Commas Inside Quotes?

C# regular expression string splitting: commas outside quotation marks

Handling strings containing embedded commas can be challenging using traditional comma-based splitting methods. This article demonstrates a solution using C# and regular expressions to split a string containing commas that may be surrounded by quotes.

Problem Statement:

Consider the following string representing a SQL code snippet:

<code>('ABCDEFG', 123542, 'XYZ 99,9')</code>

The goal is to split this string into three different parts:

1. 'ABCDEFG'
2. 123542
3. 'XYZ 99,9'

The challenge arises because the comma in the third parameter ("XYZ 99,9") should not be considered a separator.

Regular expression solution:

To solve this problem, we can use a regular expression that only matches a comma if it is preceded by an even number of single quotes. This mode ensures that commas within quotes are not split.

<code>",(?=(?:[^']*'[^']*')*[^']*$)"</code>

Usage:

<code class="language-csharp">var result = Regex.Split(sampleString, ",(?=(?:[^']*'[^']*')*[^']*$)");</code>

Explanation:

• "," matches any comma in the string.
• (?=( starts a lookahead assertion.
• (?:[^']'[^']')* matches any number of sequences of non-single quote characters, followed by a single quote character.
• [^']* matches any number of non-single quote characters.
• $ matches the end of the string.

Output:

The output of the result array is as follows:

<code>{"'ABCDEFG'", "123542", "'XYZ 99,9'"}</code>

This demonstrates successfully splitting a string based on commas outside quotes while keeping the quoted arguments intact.

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