Regex. Spliting os blank spaces. Accounting for double quoted text

Question

I am using regex to split a string. This is the input: Value1 Value2 "Val ue3"

The output should be:

• Value1

• Value2

• Val ue3

What regex should be using for this?

Answer 1

You can try this pattern:

"\\w+|\"[\\w ]+\""

It'll match words and words with spaces in between quotes. Since your output indicates you want the quotes removed then a String.Replace() can take care of that.

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        string data = "Value1   Value2   \"Val ue3\"";
        MatchCollection matchCollection = Regex.Matches(data, "\\w+|\"[\\w ]+\"");
        foreach (Match match in matchCollection)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(match.Value.Replace("\"", String.Empty));
        }
    }
}

Results:

Value1
Value2
Val ue3

Fiddle Demo