Tokenises a string into an array of strings and numbers, where anything between double quotes is considered a string.

string_tokenise.gml

/// @desc Tokenises a string into a list of values.
/// @param str {String} The string to tokenise.
/// @author Kat @katsaii
var str = argument0;
var tokens = [];
var len = string_length(str);
for (var i = 1; i <= len; i++) {
    var prefix = string_char_at(str, i);
    if (char_is_whitespace(prefix)) then continue;
    var value = undefined;
    switch (prefix) {
    case "\"":
        // tokenise string
        var start = i + 1;
        var count = 0;
        while (start + count <= len) {
            var char = string_char_at(str, start + count);
            if (char == "\"") then break;
            if (char == "\\") then count++;
            count++;
        }
        i = start + count;
        value = string_copy(str, start, count);
        break;
    default:
        // tokenise number or word
        var validNumber = true;
        var decimal = false;
        var start = i;
        var count = 0;
        while (start + count <= len) {
            var char = string_char_at(str, start + count);
            if (char_is_whitespace(char)) then break;
            switch (char) {
            case "0":
            case "1":
            case "2":
            case "3":
            case "4":
            case "5":
            case "6":
            case "7":
            case "8":
            case "9":
                break;
            case "-":
                validNumber = count == 0;
                break;
            case ".":
                if (decimal) {
                    validNumber = false;
                } else {
                    decimal = true;
                }
                break;
            default:
                validNumber = false;
                break;
            }
            count++;
        }
        i = start + count;
        value = string_copy(str, start, count);
        if (validNumber) {
            value = real(value);
        } else {
            // keywords
            switch (value) {
            case "null":
            case "void":
            case "empty":
            case "()":
            case "undefined":
                value = undefined;
                break;
            case "noone":
                value = noone;
                break;
            case "global":
                value = global;
                break;
            case "self":
                value = self;
                break;
            case "other":
                value = other;
                break;
            case "all":
                value = all;
                break;
            case "inf":
            case "infinity":
                value = infinity;
                break;
            case "NaN":
                value = NaN;
                break;
            case "yes":
            case "enable":
            case "true":
                value = true;
                break;
            case "no":
            case "disable":
            case "false":
                value = false;
                break;
            default:
                // check for an asset, otherwise just accept the word itself
                var index = asset_get_index(value);
                if (index != -1) then value = index;
                break;
            }
        }
        break;
    }
    tokens[@ array_length_1d(tokens)] = value;
}
return tokens;