Posted on by lhl

How to parse a well behaved CSV using a regex in Perl 5:


while( m{

  (^|,)

  (?: "([^"]*)"  

  |

  ([^,"]*) ) 

}xg) {

  $f = $+

  $f = $^N # version 5.8 named reference

}

That’s the maintainable code version. here’s how you’d probably see it out in the wild:


while(m{(^|,)(?:"([^"]*)"|([^,"]*) ) }xg){$f = $+}

Of course, the scary part is that I now understand this.