FAQ 4.31 How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]?

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4.31: How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]?

Several modules can handle this sort of parsing--"Text::Balanced",
"Text::CSV", "Text::CSV_XS", and "Text::ParseWords", among others.

Take the example case of trying to split a string that is
comma-separated into its different fields. You can't use "split(/,/)"
because you shouldn't split if the comma is inside quotes. For example,
take a data line like this:

SAR001,"","Cimetrix, Inc","Bob Smith","CAM",N,8,1,0,7,"Error, Core Dumped"

Due to the restriction of the quotes, this is a fairly complex problem.
Thankfully, we have Jeffrey Friedl, author of *Mastering Regular
Expressions*, to handle these for us. He suggests (assuming your string
is contained in $text):

@new = ();
push(@new, $+) while $text =~ m{
"([^\"\\]*(?:\\.[^\"\\]*)*)",? # groups the phrase inside the quotes
| ([^,]+),?
| ,
}gx;
push(@new, undef) if substr($text,-1,1) eq ',';

If you want to represent quotation marks inside a
quotation-mark-delimited field, escape them with backslashes (eg, "like
\"this\"".

Alternatively, the "Text::ParseWords" module (part of the standard Perl
distribution) lets you say:

use Text::ParseWords;
@new = quotewords(",", 0, $text);



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