Ignoring text enclosed in quotes

Question

Here's a teaser for all you Java whizzes out there. I'm developing an application which shall process html files. Part of the processing requires me to be able to identify function names, variable names, comments etc (in the script). Now here's the catch - I obviously want to ignore any characters which are enclosed in single quotes or double quotes
e.g. document.location.href = "http://blah.com"
My application as implemented, mistakes //blah.com as a comment!
I tried:
private boolean checkDouble(int idx)
Vector vQuotes = new Vector(1,1);
int idxQuote;
int lastQuote = 0;
int quoteCtr = 0;
int curr;
int prev;
String str = null;
String strQuote = "\"";
// store all the positions of the " characters
idxQuote = txt.indexOf(strQuote, lastQuote);
while (idxQuote != -1)
quoteCtr++;
vQuotes.setSize(quoteCtr);
vQuotes.setElementAt((new Integer(idxQuote)), quoteCtr-1 );
lastQuote = idxQuote+1;
idxQuote = txt.indexOf(strQuote, lastQuote);
} // end while
prev = -1;
// does idx lie btn 2 quotes?
for (int i = 0; i < vQuotes.size(); i++)
str = vQuotes.get(i).toString();
curr = Integer.parseInt(str);
if (i == 0)
prev = curr;
if (i == 0 && idx < curr) // before the first quote?
return false;
if ((idx < curr) && (idx > prev) && ((i+1) % 2 == 0))
return true;
prev = curr;
return false;
} // end checkDouble
.... but I had forgotten about the single quotes!!
e.g. function printMessage() {
document.write('hello "world');
... shall trick my app. into considering the whole block of text from "world to the next double quote, as a string.
I hope someone can see the light thru my somewhat cloudy explanation! Please help!

Answer 1

Hi,
you can use a StringTokenizer for this purpose like this
public String extractFromString(String s,String delimiter) {
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(s,delimiter);
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
boolean outside = true;
while (st.hasMoreTokens())
String p = st.nextToken();
if (outside) { sb.append(p); }
outside = !outside;
return sb.toString();
}Hope this helps - it does not handle paired delimiters, but it will give you an idea how to do it with a StringTokenizer - any delimiter switches the mode to ignore or not ignore here.
greetings Marsian