use a regex to split a pipe(|) separated string but ignore pipes in brackets

Question

Suppose I have a string like this in php(laravel):

make|aaa|select.aaa|ttt|actived_by(creator.url|test|ali)

Now I want to convert it to an array like this:

make
aaa
select.aaa
tttt
actived_by(creator.url|test|ali)

As you can see only pipe signs that are not included in brackets used to separation.

For that I wrote a function like this :

function parseQuery($query) {
    preg_match_all("/[^\|]+/", $query, $match);
    return $match;
}

But it has below output:

make
aaa
select.aaa
ttt
actived_by(creator.url
test
ali)

What is proper regex to use for desired result ?

Intreesting problem. You can extract the bracketed stuff with `#\w+\([^\)]+\)#`, leaving you with the other ones https://regex101.com/r/e3wxtt/1 — delboy1978uk, Oct 22 '18 at 14:18
I hope I am not too late. According to python [documentation](https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html) you should add backslash to avoid issues, Let me know if this solves your issue. — Cabrra, Oct 22 '18 at 14:24
Can there be cases like `make|aaa|(select.aaa|(ttt|actived_by(creator.url|test|ali)))` (to be split into 3 elements)? — Wiktor Stribiżew, Oct 22 '18 at 14:41

blhsing · Answer 1 · 2018-10-22T14:29:08.460

2

You can use the following regex instead:

(?=[^|])(?:[^|]*\([^)]+\))*[^|]*

edited Oct 22 '18 at 14:29

answered Oct 22 '18 at 14:20

blhsing

seems that it right but a problem that is an empty string generated alternate – Sadegh Hajizadeh Oct 22 '18 at 14:25
I didn't. But I now think you mean that you want to avoid matching an empty string between two `|`s right? – blhsing Oct 22 '18 at 14:28
In that case I've updated my answer to avoid matching an empty string between two `|`s. – blhsing Oct 22 '18 at 14:29

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 22 '18 at 14:31

Instead of splitting, it may also make sense to use preg_match_all using this regex:

/[^|(]+(\([^)]+\))?/

This will capture a string with no parenthesis or pipes [^(]+, optionally followed by a section encapsulated by parenthesis (\([^)]+\))?

The regex is demoed here in javascript

var input = "make|aaa|select.aaa|ttt|actived_by(creator.url|test|ali)"

console.log(input.match(/[^|(]+(\([^)]+\))?/g))

2 Answers2