Question

How can I use a regex to split (or match) this string:

a=1,b=2,c=3,4,5,d=6,e=x,y,z

The basic form is name=value,name=value where value could contain commas and name is always alphanumeric.

I’m trying to end up with:

a=1
b=2
c=3,4,5
d=6
e=x,y,z

My first thought was that the grammar was ambiguous since the values contain commas, but I think it should be doable since name doesn’t contain =.

This is close, but matches the trailing comma to each value and doesn’t match the final z:

(?<name>\w+)
\s*=\s*
(?<value>
\S
   (?:
      ,
      |
      .[^=]         
    )*
)

Produces these matches:

a=1,
b=2,
c=3,4,5,  
d=6,
e=x,y,

Any regex wizards on here?

Answer 1

You can just split on comma which is followed by an alphabet and then =, using a look-ahead assertion. You can use the below regex for split: –

",(?=[a-zA-Z0-9]=)");