Restricting characters in a quoted string

[alecramsay]

I have a double- or single-quoted string like this which works great:

string_def: pp.QuotedString = pp.QuotedString(
    '"', unquote_results=False
) | pp.QuotedString("'", unquote_results=False)

I want to restrict the characters in it, so I replaced it with this:

string: pp.Word = pp.Word(
    pp.printables, exclude_chars=meta_chars, min=2, as_keyword=True
)
double_quoted_string: pp.ParserElement = pp.Combine(
    double_quote + string + double_quote
)
single_quoted_string: pp.ParserElement = pp.Combine(
    single_quote + string + single_quote
)
string_def: pp.ParserElement = (
    double_quoted_string | single_quoted_string
)

This throws an exception on the same input though.

I'm guessing I'm missing something subtle. Appreciate any tips on how to accomplish the goal.

(Thanks for the wonderful package, Paul!)

[ptmcg]

What is in meta_chars? And what is the input that is failing that you expect to succeed?

[ptmcg]

If there are spaces in your quoted strings, then the expression you've written won't match them because printables does not include any whitespace characters.

[alecramsay]

This gave me just enough to go on that I figured out the problem: I wasn't excluding single or double quotes from the word, so my string var was eating them.

This:

quotes: str = "\"'"
string: Word = Word(printables, exclude_chars=quotes + meta_chars, min=2)
double_quoted_string: ParserElement = Combine(double_quote + string + double_quote)
single_quoted_string: ParserElement = Combine(single_quote + string + single_quote)
string_def: ParserElement = double_quoted_string | single_quoted_string

is how to replace this and only include printable characters (except quotes and meta characters):

string_def: QuotedString = QuotedString('"', unquote_results=False) | QuotedString(
    "'", unquote_results=False
)

Thanks again ...