Split String On Spaces Except For In Quotes, But Include Incomplete Quotes

I am trying to split a string in JS on spaces except when the space is in a quote. However, an incomplete quote should be maintained. I'm not skilled in regex wizardry, and have

Solution 1:

You can use

var re = /"([^"]*)"|\S+/g;

By using \S (=[^\s]) we just drop the " from the negated character class. By placing the "([^"]*)" pattern before \S+, we make sure substrings in quotes are not torn if they come before. This should work if the string contains well-paired quoted substrings and the last is unpaired.

Demo:

var re = /"([^"]*)"|\S+/g; 
var str = 'sdfj "sdfjjk';
document.body.innerHTML = JSON.stringify(str.match(re));

Note that to get the captured texts in-between quotes, you will need to use RegExp#exec in a loop (as String#match "drops" submatches).

UPDATE

No idea what downvoter thought when downvoting, but let me guess. The quotes are usually used around word characters. If there is a "wild" quote, it is still a quote right before/after a word.

So, we can utilize word boundaries like this:

"\b[^"]*\b"|\S+

See regex demo.

Here, "\b[^"]*\b" matches a " that is followed by a word character, then matches zero or more characters other than " and then is followed with a " that is preceded with a word character.

Moving further in this direction, we can make it as far as:

\B"\b[^"\n]*\b"\B|\S+

With \B" we require that " should be preceded with a non-word character, and "\B should be followed with a non-word character.

See another regex demo

A lot depends on what specific issue you have with your specific input!