Steven Arbitman wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I know parsing a comma-separated value file should be easy:
> @array = split /,/; # just split the line on commas
>
> However, my input csv file looks like this:
> Name,"street,city,state,zip",phone,email,"comments, may have commas, 2"
>
> Note, not all fields have quotes, only those which contain commas have
> quotes.
>
> Even if I could get the input revised to split the address into several
> different fields (which I know would be a good idea), the comments remain a
> problem.
>
> I can solve the problem using the substr function to examine the incoming
> text char by char, replacing commas outside quotes with something else
> (tabs), and leaving commas inside quotes, then splitting the line on tabs:
>
> $len = length ();
> for ($in_quotes=$i=0; $i<$len; $i++) {
> if (substr($_,$i,1) eq "," and !$in_quotes) {
> substr($_,$i,1) = "\t";
> } elsif (substr($_,$i,1) eq '"') {
> substr($_,$i,1)= " ";
> if ($in_quotes) {$in_quotes = 0;}
> else {$in_quotes = 1;}
> }
> }
> @infields = split /\t/;
>
> This has got to be the slowest most inelegant way possible, but I don't see
> another. Is there a better way?
>
Where does the input come from?
I wrote a csv flatfile database which has input from html forms. In that
case, I translated ALL commas to a control character, (null, i think), such
as: $value =~ s/,/\x00/g;. I did this when originally parsing the STDIN.
Of course to parse the csv file, I have to translate those CTL characters
back to commas again *after* splitting the record.
Bompa
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