I am parsing some game config files using Python and putting it all in dictionaries. It seemed to all work well until I encountered the following edge-case:

random_owned_controlled_state = {
    create_unit = { 
        division = "name = "6. Belarusian Red Riflemen" division_template = "Belarusian Red Riflemen" start_experience_factor = 0.5" 
        owner = PREV
    }
    create_unit = { 
        division = "name = "7. Belarusian Red Riflemen" division_template = "Belarusian Red Riflemen" start_experience_factor = 0.5" 
        owner = PREV
    }
}

I want to remove all spaces, tabs and newlines unless within doublequotes and eventually delimit separate statements with semicolons to get something like this which is easier to extract information from:

random_owned_controlled_state={create_unit={division="name = "6. Belarusian Red Riflemen" division_template = "Belarusian Red Riflemen" start_experience_factor = 0.5";owner=PREV;};create_unit={division="name = "7. Belarusian Red Riflemen" division_template = "Belarusian Red Riflemen" start_experience_factor = 0.5";owner=PREV;};};

I created this function to achieve this, or so I thought:

def remove_spacers(string: str, brackets: Tuple[str, str], operators: List[str], replacement: str, commentchar: str) -> str:
    """
    Get rid of all white spaces in file and remove or replace with replacement
    :param string:          Raw String
    :param replacement:     What to replace with
    :param commentchar:     Character used to indicate comments
    :return:                Cleaned String
    """
    # Strip front and end
    result = string.strip(" nt")

    # Remove all comments from text
    result = re.sub(rf"{commentchar}.*", "", result)

    # Remove all whitespace bundles except for inside "" and replace with single space
    result = re.sub(r"s+(?=([^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)", " ", result)

    # Remove whitespaces around operators (=,<,>)
    for operator in operators:
        result = re.sub(rf"s*{operator}s*", rf"{operator}", result)

    # Remove whitespaces after {
    result = re.sub(rf"{brackets[0]}s", rf"{brackets[0]}", result)

    # Replace whitespaces after anything else with ;
    result = re.sub(r"s(?=([^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)", replacement, result)

    # Replace any potential multiple consecutive ; with a single ;
    result = re.sub(rf"{replacement}{2,}", replacement, result)

    # Make sure every statement ends with ;
    result = re.sub(rf"(?<!{replacement}){brackets[1]}", rf"{replacement}{brackets[1]}", result)
    if result[-1] != replacement:
        result += replacement
    result = f"{{{result}}}{replacement}"
    return result

Calling it like: cleaned_text = remove_spacers(text, ('{', '}'), ['=', '<', '>'], ";", "#")

I likely need to adjust the following regex line:

result = re.sub(r"s+(?=([^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)", " ", result)

But am unsure how to achieve this behaviour since I am by no means experienced with regex.