Perl expression for parsing CSV (ignoring parsing commas when in double quotes)

[GIMME]

I can't figure an expression needed to parse a string.

This problem arrises from parsing Excel csv files ...

The expression must parse a string based upon comma delimiters,
but if a comma appears in double quotes it should not be used for parsing.

For example in the simple case we'd have :

$a='hello,brave ,world';

($v,$x,$y) = split(/,/,$a);

Should yeild (no suprise here)

hello for $v
brave for $x, and
world for $y


For the more advanced case we'd have :

$a='hello,"brav e, but cruel, and joyous","planet , or world"';

hello for $v
brave, but cruel, and joyous for $x, and
planet, or world for $y


Thanks in advance to the kind souls who are sharp enough to get this one.

[Joe Smith]

Re: Perl expression for parsing CSV (ignoring parsing commas whenin double quotes)

GIMME wrote:
[color=blue]
> I can't figure an expression needed to parse a string.
> Thanks in advance to the kind souls who are sharp enough to get this one.[/color]

#!/bin/perl
use Text::CSV;
my $a = 'hello,"brave, but cruel, and joyous","planet , or world"';
my $csv = Text::CSV->new();
my $status = $csv->parse($a);
my @fields = $csv->fields();
print "a=$a status=$status fields=\n\t", join("\n\t",@fi elds), "\n";

-Joe

[GIMME]

Re: Perl expression for parsing CSV (ignoring parsing commas when in double quotes)

Thanks very much Joe.

I didn't say it but I found a post which easily translated
to Java and ORO ... Next time I'll look before posting.
Haha haha.

This

while($_){
s/([^,]*?(".*?")*)(,|$ )//;
push @out, $1;
}

Became this ...

import org.apache.oro. text.perl.Perl5 Util;

public String[] parseRecordStri ng(String record) {
ArrayList r = new ArrayList();
while(! record.equals(" ") ) {
record = P5UTIL.substitu te("s/([^,]*?(\".*?\")*)(, |$)//",record);
r.add(P5UTIL.gr oup(1));
}
return (String[]) r.toArray(new String[r.size()]);
}


Joe Smith <Joe.Smith@inwa p.com> wrote in message news:<zhjWb.351 7