[SOLVED] Replace spaces differently depending on outside or inside single quotes

Replace spaces differently depending on outside or inside single quotes

I have input which has some fields

separated by spaces,
some other are enclosed in quotes and also seperated by spaces

Here is an example input:

active=1 'oldest active'=0s disabled=0 'function call'=0

I would like to replace :

all spaces outside quotes by | and
all inside quotes by _

Output would be:

active=1|'oldest_active'=0s|disabled=0|'function_call'=0

I tried different solutions with sed or perl found on the web but did not managed to do want I want.

Solution

$ s="active=1 'oldest active'=0s disabled=0 'function call'=0"
$ echo "$s" | perl -pe "s/'[^']*'(*SKIP)(*F)| /|/g; s/ /_/g"
active=1|'oldest_active'=0s|disabled=0|'function_call'=0

Two step replacement:

First, '[^']*'(*SKIP)(*F) will skip all patterns surrounded by ' and replace the remaining spaces with |
Second, the spaces now left inside ' will be replaced with _

Alternate solution:

$ echo "$s" | perl -pe "s/'[^']*'/$& =~ s| |_|gr/ge; s/ /|/g"
active=1|'oldest_active'=0s|disabled=0|'function_call'=0

Inspired from this answer
'[^']*'/$& =~ s| |_|gr/ge replace all spaces in matched pattern '[^']*' using another substitute command. The e modifier allows using command instead of string in replacement section
the remaining spaces are then taken care with s/ /|/g