Python regular expressions

Question

Is there any regular expression to match this:

• a continuous string of characters or/and digits XOR
• a string of any characters between a pairquotation marks (" XOR ')including nested quotations

?

Examples:

• dgsdggsgggdggsggsd
• 'dsfsasf .asgafaasfafw rq'
• "sadas fa fasfa "

Answer 1

Maybe you can try this:

>>> message = "blabla df qdsf dqsf \"fqdfdqsfsdf  fdqs fqdsf\""
>>> pattern = "(\w+|'.*[^']'|\".*[^\"]\")"
>>> re.findall(pattern, message)
['blabla', 'df', 'qdsf', 'dqsf', '"fqdfdqsfsdf  fdqs fqdsf"']

Answer 2

Perhaps relevant: do you know about the shlex module?