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