Quote-aware string splitting

[Bengt Richter]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:40:44 -0700, Jeffrey Froman <jeffrey at fro.man> wrote:

>J. W. McCall wrote:
>
>> For example, given the string:
>> 
>> 'spam "the life of brian" 42'
>> 
>> I'd want it to return:
>> 
>> ['spam', 'the life of brian', '42']
>
>The .split() method of strings can take a substring, such as a quotation
>mark, as a delimiter. So a simple solution is:
>
>>>> x = 'spam "the life of brian" 42'
>>>> [z.strip() for z in x.split('"')]
>['spam', 'the life of brian', '42']
>

 >>> x = ' sspam " ssthe life of brianss " 42'
 >>> [z.strip() for z in x.split('"')]
 ['sspam', 'ssthe life of brianss', '42']

Oops, note some spaces inside quotes near ss and missing double quotes in result.
Maybe (not tested beyond what you see):

 >>> [r for r in [(i%2 and ['"'+z+'"'] or [z.strip()])[0] for i,z in enumerate(x.split('"'))] if r] or ['']
 ['sspam', '" ssthe life of brianss "', '42']
 >>> x = ' ""  ""  '
 >>> [r for r in [(i%2 and ['"'+z+'"'] or [z.strip()])[0] for i,z in enumerate(x.split('"'))] ifr] or ['']
 ['""', '""']
 >>> x='""'
 >>> [r for r in [(i%2 and ['"'+z+'"'] or [z.strip()])[0] for i,z in enumerate(x.split('"'))] ifr] or ['']
 ['""']
 >>> x=''
 >>> [r for r in [(i%2 and ['"'+z+'"'] or [z.strip()])[0] for i,z in enumerate(x.split('"'))] ifr] or ['']
 ['']

 >>> [(i%2 and ['"'+z+'"'] or [z.strip()])[0] for i,z in enumerate(x.split('"'))]
 ['sspam', '" ssthe life of brianss "', '42']


Regards,
Bengt Richter