From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-03-20T04:09:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Split string at spaces, but not when inside quotation marks?

On 19.03.2008 17:07, Peter Bunyan wrote:
> Sebastian Hungerecker wrote:
>> Peter Bunyan wrote:
>>> Is there already a built-in method to do this
>> require 'shellwords'
>> Shellwords.shellwords 'Hello "wo rld" how "are \" you today"'
>> => ["Hello", "wo rld", "how", "are \" you today"]
>>
>> HTH,
>> Sebastian
> 
> Mmm, that's yummy! Thanks, I'm using this now. Thanks to all of your 
> replies, you all rock hard.

Though I'm coming in late to the party: sometimes you can exchange 
#split and #scan.  This is something I use sometimes:

irb(main):006:0> string = 'a simple solution that uses "a regular 
expression" - see?'
=> "a simple solution that uses \"a regular expression\" - see?"
irb(main):007:0> quotes = string.scan %r{"[^"]*"|\S+}
=> ["a", "simple", "solution", "that", "uses", "\"a regular 
expression\"", "-", "see?"]

Note: the order of the alternative in the regexp matters!  This works 
because Ruby's regex engine is NFA based.  Here's what happens if you 
exchange the two

irb(main):008:0> quotes = string.scan %r{\S+|"[^"]*"}
=> ["a", "simple", "solution", "that", "uses", "\"a", "regular", 
"expression\"", "-", "see?"]

Kind regards

	robert