[Tutor] str.split and quotes

[C Smith]

> I wish it would leave the stuff in quotes in tact:
>

If you first split on your delimiter (which must have a matching one) 
you will obtain a list in which every odd position contains a string 
that was quoted. Step through the result and split the ones that are 
not quoted ones but don't do anything to the quoted ones.

###
s='"Hi" there "Python Tutors" please help me'

delim='"'

# check for matching quotes
if s.count(delim)%2<>0:
	print 'Unmatched delimiters in string'
	assert s.count(delim)%2==0

# split it
s=s.split(delim)

# remove elements 1 at a time, putting result to end of list;
# when you're done, the original list has been destroyed and
# the correct list is in its place
for i in range(len(s)):
	si=s.pop(0) #pop off the next one from the list
	if i%2==0:
		s.extend(si.split())
	else:
		s.append(si)
print s
###

OUTPUT: ['Hi', 'there', 'Python Tutors', 'please', 'help', 'me']

/c