<s>[INST] Split a string by spaces -- preserving quoted substrings -- in Python I have a string which is like this:
this is "a test"

I'm trying to write something in Python to split it up by space while ignoring spaces within quotes. The result I'm looking for is:
['this','is','a test']

PS. I know you are going to ask "what happens if there are quotes within the quotes, well, in my application, that will never happen.
 [/INST] You want split, from the shlex module.
>>> import shlex
>>> shlex.split('this is "a test"')
['this', 'is', 'a test']

This should do exactly what you want.
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