Regular Expression To Replace All Comma(,) Present Outside Double Quotes by Pipe(|)

While parsing CSV file many times we need to replace the comma outside the double quotes by some other characters like pipe(|).

We can do that by using regular expression in a very simple way.

Lets see some example:

Input String:       Japan,"Washington, DC,Prabhu,aju",New York,"Beijing, shanghai",Tokyo,Delhi
Out Put String:   Japan|"Washington, DC,Prabhu,aju"|New York|"Beijing, shanghai"|Tokyo|Delhi

Input String:       "abc,def","xyz,",",def",""
Out put String:   "abc,def"|"xyz,"|",def"|""


If we will do this by JavaScript then:

Use the Regular Expression: ",(?=(?:[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*[^\"]*$)"

<script type="text/javascript">
    var inputStr = "";//Your String
    var result = Regex.Replace(inputStr, ",(?=(?:[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*[^\"]*$)","|");//Resulted String
</script>

This produce the string with all comma(,) present out side the double quote will be replaced by pipe(|).

This question is answered at this :

http://www.mindfirelabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=481


Hope it will save your ...