* How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]
+ mention Text::CVS_XS and Text::Balanced
+ move mention of modules to top of answer (so the answer is in the
first sentence)
+ removed side discussion of "separated" versus "delimited"
+ rewrap second paragraph
+ removed parenthetical comment at end of question (it's in the text
so perldoc -q should still find it)
+ put question on a single line
+ adjusted perlfaq.pod for new question line
Index: perlfaq4.pod
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/public/perlfaq/perlfaq4.pod,v
retrieving revision 1.28
diff -u -d -r1.28 perlfaq4.pod
--- perlfaq4.pod 17 Aug 2002 17:07:33 -0000 1.28
+++ perlfaq4.pod 17 Aug 2002 19:50:22 -0000
@@ -744,20 +744,21 @@
capitalization of the movie I<Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to
Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb>, for example.
-=head2 How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside
-[character]? (Comma-separated files)
+=head2 How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]?
-Take the example case of trying to split a string that is comma-separated
-into its different fields. (We'll pretend you said comma-separated, not
-comma-delimited, which is different and almost never what you mean.) You
-can't use C<split(/,/)> because you shouldn't split if the comma is inside
-quotes. For example, take a data line like this:
+Several modules can handle this sort of pasing---Text::Balanced,
+Text::CVS, Text::CVS_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 C<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 a highly
-recommended book on regular expressions, to handle these for us. He
+problem. Thankfully, we have Jeffrey Friedl, author of
+I<Mastering Regular Expressions>, to handle these for us. He
suggests (assuming your string is contained in $text):
@new = ();
@@ -770,8 +771,7 @@
If you want to represent quotation marks inside a
quotation-mark-delimited field, escape them with backslashes (eg,
-C<"like \"this\"">. Unescaping them is a task addressed earlier in
-this section.
+C<"like \"this\"">.
Alternatively, the Text::ParseWords module (part of the standard Perl
distribution) lets you say:
Index: perlfaq.pod
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/public/perlfaq/perlfaq.pod,v
retrieving revision 1.8
diff -u -d -r1.8 perlfaq.pod
--- perlfaq.pod 11 Mar 2002 21:32:23 -0000 1.8
+++ perlfaq.pod 17 Aug 2002 19:54:21 -0000
@@ -421,8 +421,7 @@
=item *
-How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside
-[character]? (Comma-separated files)
+How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]?
=item *
