How can i split a QString by a delimiter and not if that delimiter is somewhere enclosed in square-brackets

If i have a QString in the form of QString s = QString("A:B[1:2]:C:D"); i want somehow to split by ':', but only, if not enclosed in square-brackets.

So the desited output of the above QString woud be "A", "B[1:2]", "C", "D"

Right now, I can only think of something like replacing ':' in the range of s.indexOf('[') and s.indexOf(']'), then split and afterwards replace back to ':' in any remaining split, but that seems rather inconvenient.

EDIT: based on comments and answers: any number in square-brackets shall be the same after splitting. There are characters, e.g.: ';' that i can use t as temporary replacement for ':'

Any better idea?

Solution

Usually, I like the idea of using a regular expression here for split directly, but I could not come up with one quickly. So here it your idea of first replacing the unwanted colon with something else (here a semicolon) and then split on the remaining colons and replace the semicolon back to a colon on the separate strings.

#include <QDebug>
#include <QRegularExpression>
#include <QString>

int main()
{
    QString string("A:B[1:2]:C:D");

    // This replaces all occurences of "[x:y]" by "[x;y]" with
    // x and y being digits.
    // \\[ finds exactly the character '['. It has to be masked
    // by backslashes because it's a special character in regular
    // expressions.
    // (\\d) is a capture for a digit that can be used in the
    // resulting string as \\1, \\2 and so on.
    string = string.replace(QRegularExpression("\\[(\\d):(\\d)\\]"), "[\\1;\\2]");

    // split on the remaining colons
    QStringList elements = string.split(':');

    // Iterate over all fractions the string was split into
    foreach(QString element, elements) {
        // Replace the semicolons back to colons.
        qDebug() << element.replace(QRegularExpression("\\[(\\d);(\\d)\\]"), "[\\1:\\2]");
    }
}

The output:

"A"
"B[1:2]"
"C"
"D"