title: Don't split double-quoted words with Python string split()?
body: <p>When using the Python string function split(), does anybody have a nifty trick to treat items surrounded by double-quotes as a non-splitting word?</p>
  
  <p>Say I want to split only on white space and I have this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; myStr = 'A B\t"C" DE "FE"\t\t"GH I JK L" "" ""\t"O P   Q" R'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; myStr.split()
  ['A', 'B', '"C"', 'DE', '"FE"', '"GH', 'I', 'JK', 'L"', '""', '""', '"O', 'P', 'Q"', 'R']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'd like to treat anything within double-quotes as a single word, even if white spaces are embedded, so would like to end up with the below:</p>
  
  <pre><code>['A', 'B', 'C', 'DE', 'FE', 'GH I JK L', '', '', 'O P   Q', 'R']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Or at least this and then I'll strip off the double-quotes:</p>
  
  <pre><code>['A', 'B', '"C"', 'DE', '"FE"', '"GH I JK L"', '""', '""', '"O P   Q"', 'R']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any non-regex suggestions?</p>