Java Regex for , not followed by a space

Question

I'm trying to seperate a csv file values using a regex expression, The problem is that there are quotation marks surrounding sentences and the regex I've tried doesn't seem to do it correctly.

"All's Well, Ends Well 2012",Comedy

This is one of the strings that is contained in the CSV and I've tried separating it with quite a few different regex statements but it keeps just returning the whole string without seperating it.

Any advice or work arounds regarding the regex I can use for this ?

Probably `(?:^|,)(\"(?:[^\"]+|\"\")*\"|[^,]*)` or better a CSV parser ! — AllTooSir, Aug 02 '13 at 12:39

Evgeniy Dorofeev · Answer 1 · 2013-08-02T12:53:13.170

4

The best advice is to use a CVS parser, eg http://opencsv.sourceforge.net/, regex is not the best choice for parsing CSV

edited Aug 02 '13 at 12:53

answered Aug 02 '13 at 12:39

Evgeniy Dorofeev

133,369
30
199
275

Unless you are good at regex :) – Bohemian Aug 02 '13 at 12:59

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 13 '14 at 18:45

1

Use a regex with split() that splits by commas only when an even number of quotes appear in the rest of the input:

String[] parts = line.split(",(?=(([^\"]*\"){2})*[^\"]*$)");

See this code execute in a live demo on ideone

edited Feb 13 '14 at 18:45

animuson

53,861
28
137
147

answered Aug 02 '13 at 12:43

Bohemian

412,405
93
575
722

Thank you this works perfectly ^^ I'm using it on processing and not sure if I can include external libraries in it. so thanks a lot – Crossman Aug 02 '13 at 12:45

Java Regex for , not followed by a space

2 Answers2