I am parsing a file that has lines such as
type("book") title("golden apples") pages(10-35 70 200-234) comments("good read")
And I want to split this into separate fields.
In my example, there are four fields: type, title, pages, and comments.
The desired result after splitting is
['type("book")', 'title("golden apples")', 'pages(10-35 70 200-234)', 'comments("good read")]
It is evident that a simple string split won't work, because it will just split at every space. I want to split on spaces, but preserve anything in between parenthesis and quotation marks.
How can I split this?
This regex should work for you \s+(?=[^()]*(?:\(|$))
result = re.split(r"\s+(?=[^()]*(?:\(|$))", subject)
Explanation
r"""
\s # Match a single character that is a “whitespace character” (spaces, tabs, and line breaks)
+ # Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
(?= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, starting at this position (positive lookahead)
[^()] # Match a single character NOT present in the list “()”
* # Between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
(?: # Match the regular expression below
# Match either the regular expression below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
\( # Match the character “(” literally
| # Or match regular expression number 2 below (the entire group fails if this one fails to match)
$ # Assert position at the end of a line (at the end of the string or before a line break character)
)
)
"""