Question

I have a String that I need to strip out all the spaces except for what between "". Here is the Regex that I am using to strip out spaces.

str.replace(/\s/g, "");

I cant seem to figure out how to get it to ignore spaces between quotes.
Example

str = 'Here is my example "leave spaces here", ok im done'
Output = 'Hereismyexample"leave spaces here",okimdone'

Answer 1

Another way to do it. This has the assumption that no escaping is allowed within double quoted part of the string (e.g. no "leave \" space \" here"), but can be easily modified to allow it.

str.replace(/([^"]+)|("[^"]+")/g, function($0, $1, $2) {
    if ($1) {
        return $1.replace(/\s/g, '');
    } else {
        return $2; 
    } 
});

Modified regex to allow escape of " within quoted string:

/([^"]+)|("(?:[^"\\]|\\.)+")/