splitting words with brackets

[faulkner]

re.findall('\([^\)]*\)|\[[^\]]*|\S+', s)

Qiangning Hong wrote:
> I've got some strings to split.  They are main words, but some words
> are inside a pair of brackets and should be considered as one unit.  I
> prefer to use re.split, but haven't written a working one after hours
> of work.
>
> Example:
>
> "a (b c) d [e f g] h i"
> should be splitted to
> ["a", "(b c)", "d", "[e f g]", "h", "i"]
>
> As speed is a factor to consider, it's best if there is a single line
> regular expression can handle this.  I tried this but failed:
> re.split(r"(?![\(\[].*?)\s+(?!.*?[\)\]])", s).  It work for "(a b) c"
> but not work "a (b c)" :(
> 
> Any hint?