How can I explode a string by commas, but not where the commas are within this («») quotes?

Question

I need to explode a string by commas but not within quotes(«»).

I have a string like: "5,test2,4631954,Y,«some, string, text.»,299.00 TJS,http://some-link"

i want this result:

[
 0 => 5,
 1 => test2,
 2 => 4631954,
 3 => Y,
 4 => «some, string, text.»,
 5 => 299.00 TJS,
 6 => http://some-link
]

Tried with preg_split, str_getcsv but didnt get needed result.

$res = str_getcsv($res, ',');
$res = preg_split("/(?<=\)),/", $res);

`str_getcsv()` should work if you use proper double quotes instead of `«` and `»`. — Barmar, Sep 04 '18 at 08:30
@Barmar I tried `str_getcsv()` but the result is the same as `explode(',', $var)` — Valijon Rahimov, Sep 04 '18 at 08:30
@Barmar: 'RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK' (U+00BB). They are double quotes. There's more than one kind. — Amadan, Sep 04 '18 at 08:31
@WiktorStribiżew Usually. And yet, I quote the canonical Unicode name. — Amadan, Sep 04 '18 at 08:32
@Amadan Unfortunately, no CSV parser will understand them. I think they all allow only a single enclosure character, not a pair of balanced brackets. — Barmar, Sep 04 '18 at 08:33
@Amadan "double angle quotation mark" is not the same as "double quote". — Barmar, Sep 04 '18 at 08:33
Can we safely assume that there will be none of your whatever called quotes inside your datafields? You could then simply replace them with `"` and use `str_getcsv`. — Sebastian Proske, Sep 04 '18 at 08:34
Then try [`preg_split('~«[^«»]*»(*SKIP)(*F)|\s*,\s*~u', $s)`](https://ideone.com/5C0czb). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Sep 04 '18 at 08:37
@Barmar: I know about no CVS parsers understanding them; I'm just nitpicking "Those aren't double quotes". BTW, `"` is just 'QUOTATION MARK' (U+0022), not "double quote" either. I didn't feel good about you correcting OP, when OP is essentially correct. There's more cultures than en_US. — Amadan, Sep 04 '18 at 08:38

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '18 at 08:43

If you have no regular quotation marks to take care of in your strings to split, you may get what you need with a SKIP-FAIL based regex:

$s = "5,test2,4631954,Y,«some, string, text.»,299.00 TJS,http://some-link";
print_r(preg_split('~«[^«»]*»(*SKIP)(*F)|\s*,\s*~', $s));

See the PHP demo

Pattern details

«[^«»]*»(*SKIP)(*F) - «, 0+ chars other than « and », and then » are matched, the regex engine is moved to the end of this matched text, and then the whole text is removed from the current match buffer and the engine goes on to search for the next match
| - or
\s*,\s* - a , enclosed with 0+ whitespaces

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => 5
    [1] => test2
    [2] => 4631954
    [3] => Y
    [4] => «some, string, text.»
    [5] => 299.00 TJS
    [6] => http://some-link
)

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 09:46

$theString = "5,test2,4631954,Y,«some, string, text.»,299.00 TJS,http://some-link";
$var_arr = array();
$j = mb_strlen($theString);
$chars = "";
for ($k = 0; $k < $j; $k++) 
{
    $char = mb_substr($theString, $k, 1);
    if($char == ","  )
    {
        if (!\preg_match("/[\«»]/", $chars)) {
            $var_arr[] =  $chars.",";
            $chars = "";
        }
        else{
            if(preg_match("/«(.*?)»/",$chars))
            {
                $var_arr[] =  $chars.",";
                $chars = "";
            }
            else
            $chars .= $char;
        }
    }
    else{
        $chars .= $char;
    }

    if( ($k + 1) == $j)
    {
        $var_arr[] =  $chars;
    }

}
print_r($var_arr);

How can I explode a string by commas, but not where the commas are within this («») quotes?

2 Answers2