["python","regex"]
Split a string by spaces -- preserving quoted substrings -- in Python

I have a string which is like this: this is "a test" I'm trying to write something in Python to split it up by space while ignoring spaces within quotes. The result I'm looking for is: ['this', 'is', 'a test'] PS. I know you are going to ask "what happens if there are quotes within the quotes, well, in my application, that will never happen.
You want split, from the built-in shlex module. >>> import shlex >>> shlex.split('this is "a test"') ['this', 'is', 'a test'] This should do exactly what you want. If you want to preserve the quotation marks, then you can pass the posix=False kwarg. >>> shlex.split('this is "a test"', posix=False) ['this', 'is', '"a test"']