Java regex replaceAll

Question

I need to remove \s*,\s* but only when it's not between ". For example, this string a, b , c, "a, b , , c," a ,, should look like abc"a, b , , c," a.

As I found out [^abc] means don't touch abc and \.* means everything so I tried this:

str = str.replaceAll("[^\"\\.*,\\.*\"]\\s*,\\s*", "");

Important: amount of " is even.

• August: "\\.* means everything" - It actually will repeat the . character.
• Maksim: Are you sure? I thought . means any symbol.
• August: It's escaped, so it will be . literally.
• Maksim: Do you mean it gonna work? replaceAll("[^\".*,.*\"]\\s*,\\s*", "") It doesn't.
• fge: Not very obvious with regexes; classical tools here would be better (indexOf etc). Also, what must be done if you have, say, a,b, "a, b?

Answer 1

Use this pattern

\s*,\s*(?=(?:(?:[^"]*"){2})*[^"]*$) 

Demo
and I guess in your case, replace \s with \\s

\s*,\s* # your pattern
(?= # look-ahead
 (?:(?:[^"]*"){2})* # optional pairs of double quotes
 [^"]*$ # followed by optional anything but double quotes to the end
) 

• alpha bravo: explanation posted above.
• Maksim: Thank you. You've helped me so much. =)