<p>I have a string which is like this:</p>
<pre><code>this is &quot;a test&quot;
</code></pre>
<p>I'm trying to write something in Python to split it up by space while ignoring spaces within quotes. The result I'm looking for is:</p>
<pre><code>['this', 'is', 'a test']
</code></pre>
<p>PS. I know you are going to ask &quot;what happens if there are quotes within the quotes, well, in my application, that will never happen.</p>

You want
```
split
```
, from the built-in
```
shlex
```
module.
```
```
>>> import shlex
>>> shlex.split('this is "a test"')
['this', 'is', 'a test']
```
```
This should do exactly what you want.
If you want to preserve the quotation marks, then you can pass the
```
posix=False
```
kwarg.
```
```
>>> shlex.split('this is "a test"', posix=False)
['this', 'is', '"a test"']
```
```