How can I split on a string except when inside quotes?

Adam has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: ⭐ (regular expressions)

my $string = "first-item \"second item\" third-item";
my @items = split /???/, $string;
my $i = 0;
print ++$i, ": $_\n" for @items;
# Would print:
# 1: first-item
# 2: "second item"
# 3: third-item
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Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Comment on How can I split on a string except when inside quotes? Download Code

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Re: How can I split on a string except when inside quotes?⭐ by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 24, 2000 at 21:10 UTC
use Text::ParseWords	[reply]
Re: How can I split on a string except when inside quotes? by Anonymous Monk on Nov 28, 2001 at 19:40 UTC
This doesn't handle all the subtle things (backslashes, single-quotes, etc) that Text::ParseWords does, but it works for the simple cases, and produces your expected output exactly (quotes intact): `my @items = ($string =~ /(".*?"\|\S+)/g);`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How can I split on a string except when inside quotes? by Coruscate (Sexton) on Feb 15, 2003 at 10:46 UTC
Late entry: how about something like this: `my $string = 'first-item "second item" ' . 'third-item "fourth item"'; my %items; push @{$items{ $1 =~ /"/ ? 'quoted' : 'unquoted' }}, $1 while $string =~ /(".*?"\|\S+)/g; print 'Quoted: ', join(', ', @{$items{'quoted'}}), "\n"; print 'Unquoted: ', join(', ', @{$items{'unquoted'}}), "\n";` [download]	[reply] [d/l]


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