Quote aware split

[Ondrej Baudys]

Hi,

After trawling through the archives for a simple quote aware split
implementation (ie string.split-alike that only splits outside of
matching quote) and coming up short,  I implemented a quick and dirty
function that suits my purposes.

It's ugly and it doesn't use a stack, it only supports a single
character as a 'sep' function, only supports one type of quote (ie '
or " but not both), but it does the job, and since there have been a
few appeals over the years for something of this sort I have decided
to post what I have:

--- BEGIN ---
#!/usr/bin/env python

def qsplit(chars, sep, quote="'"):
    """ Quote aware split """
    qcount = 0
    splitpoints = [-1] # ie. seperator char found before first letter ;)
    for index, c in enumerate(chars):
        if c is quote:
            qcount += 1
        if c is sep and qcount % 2 == 0:
            splitpoints.append(index)

    # slice chars by splitpoints *omitting the separator*
    slices = [chars[splitpoints[i]+1:splitpoints[i+1]]
                                for i in range(len(splitpoints)-1)]

    # last slice will be of the form chars[last:] which we couldnt do above
    slices.append(chars[splitpoints[-1]+1:])
    return slices


if __name__ == "__main__":
    test = "This is gonna be in quotes ';' and this is not; lets see
how we split"

    test2 = """
    A more complex example; try this on for size:

    create function blah '
        split me once;
        split me twice; '
    end;
    'one more time;'
    and again;
    """
    print "*--split--*".join(qsplit(test, ';'))
    print "*--split--*".join(qsplit(test2, ';'))

# vim:tabstop=4:shiftwidth=4:expandtab
--- END ---

Regards,
Ondrej Baudys