I need a Java RegEx to split, or find something in a string, but exclude stuff that's between double quotes. What I do now is this:

String withoutQuotes = str.replaceAll("\\\".*?\\\"", "placeholder");
withoutQuotes = withoutQuotes.replaceAll(" ","");

but this doesn't work nice with indexOf, and I also need to be able to split, for example:

String str = "hello;world;how;\"are;you?\""
String[] strArray = str.split(/*some regex*/);
// strArray now contains: ["hello", "world", "how", "\"are you?\"]

• quotes are always balanced
• quotes can be escaped with \"

Any help is appreciated