Like the question says, is it possible to use a single Regex string to get a delimiter that isn't in between some quotes?

For example, I want to split this string with the delimiter &:

"example=3&testing='f&tmp'"

should produce

["example=3", "testing='f&tmp'"]

Essentially, things inside single quotes (' ') should remain untouched.

I found out how to get things within quotes with expression: (?:'.*?')

The closest I could get to a tangible solution was: (.[^']&[^'])

CodePudding user response：

It is not an easy task for a String#split, but is quite a feasible task for Matcher#find if you use

[^&\s=] =(?:'[^']*'|[^\s&]*)

(see this regex demo) and this Java code:

String text = "example=3&testing='f&tmp'";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[^&\\s=] =(?:'[^']*'|[^\\s&]*)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
List<String> res = new ArrayList<>();
while(m.find()) {
    res.add(m.group());
}
System.out.println(res);
// => [example=3, testing='f&tmp']

Details

• [^&\s=] - one or more chars other than &, = and whitespace
• = - a = char
• (?:'[^']*'|[^\s&]*) - a non-capturing group matching either ', zero or more chars other than ' and then a ', or zero or more chars other than whitespace and &.