Python Forum

i would like to split a line by whitespace into items where there may be items with quoted whitepace. for example i might have a string like this:

foo "a b 'c'" bar

and i would like to get a list equivalent to ["foo","a b 'c'","bar"]. this means parsing the line string with an understanding of whitespaces and quotes. anyone know anything that will strictly parse the line and safely bail out if is not just right? support for triple quotes is a plus but not required.

one way

import csv
line = """foo "a b 'c'" bar"""
rdr = csv.reader([line], delimiter=' ')
print(next(rdr))

Output:
['foo', "a b 'c'", 'bar']