Split a string ignoring quoted sections *

Question

Given a string like this:

a,"string, with",various,"values, and some",quoted

What is a good algorithm to split this based on commas while ignoring the commas inside the quoted sections?

The output should be an array:

[ "a", "string, with", "various", "values, and some", "quoted" ]

Answer

If my language of choice didn't offer of way to do this without thinking then I would initially consider two options as the easy way out:

1. Pre-parse and replace the commas within the string with another control character then split them, followed by a post-parse on the array to replace the control character used previously with the commas.

2. Alternatively split them on the commas then post-parse the resulting array into another array checking for leading quotes on each array entry and concatanating the entries until I reached a terminating quote.

These are hacks however, and if this is a pure 'mental' exercise then I suspect they are unhelpful. If this is a real world problem then it would help to know the language so that we could offer some specific advice.

< br > via < a class="StackLink" href=" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6209/" >Split a string ignoring quoted sections< /a>

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