Question

I’m looking for a way, in .NET, to split a string while ignoring split characters that are within quotes (or another delimiter). (This functionality would match what a typical CSV parser does if the split delimiter is a comma.) I’m not sure why this ability isn’t built into String.Split().

Answer 1

You can use a regular expression for that. Example:

string test = @"this,i""s,a"",test";
string[] parts =
  Regex.Matches(test, @"(""[^""]*""|[^,])+")
  .Cast<Match>()
  .Select(m => m.Value)
  .ToArray();

foreach (string s in parts) Console.WriteLine(s);

Output:

this
i"s,a"
test