Question

I have a string and I want is split into an array so that it is split by ‘+’ unless it is inside brackets

E.g. the string

“abc+OR+def+OR+(abc+AND+def)”

becomes

[“abc”, “OR”, “def”, “OR”, “(abc+AND+def)”]

and the string

“(abc+AND+cde)+OR+(abc+AND+(cde+AND+fgh))”

becomes

[“(abc+AND+cde)”, “OR”, “(abc+AND+(cde+AND+fgh)”]

Is it possible to do this using regular expressions?

Answer 1

I don’t think you could do this with regex. EDIT: per Silver, you could use regex.
One way would be to just parse the string character by character. I’ll edit my answer with code in a minute.
EDIT: Here’s a sample implementation (note: untested, may have a bug or two):

function parseString (str) {
  var splitStr = [], parentheses = 0, i = 0
  for (var j = 0; j < str.length; j++) {
    if (str[j] == '+' && !parentheses)
      i++
    else if (str[j] == '(')
      parentheses++
    else if (str[j] == ')')
      parentheses--
    else
      splitStr[i] += str[j]
  }
  return splitStr
}