Either you use the module mentioned or try a multi stage split. It´s
uglier but is a way to get the work done.
First I´d split he data by ("\s+\"") then by ("\"\s+") then I´d deal
with the tabs....
Just my two cents. ;-)
On 8 abr, 09:39, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brad Baxter) wrote:
> If I were you, I'd use Text::ParseWords::parse_line()
>
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 9:11 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Hi all,
>
> > I am writing a perl script to parse a file. The data in the file is
> > seperated by space/tab. However, certain fields may be empty or
> > consist of mutiple words and are double quoted and this makes it
> > difficut for me to do a split.
>
> > Example of data:
> > "" "This is 2nd field"
> > 3 4
> > 1 2
> > "" 4
> > 1 2 "The field may consist of (meta)
> > characters" ""
>
> > What I am doing is as such:
> > while ($line=~/(".*?")/) {; <- Loops until all double-
> > quoted string is replaced
> > $line=~s/""/__EMPTY__/g;
> > $tmp1=$1;
> > $tmp2=$1;
> > $tmp1=~s/"//g;
> > $tmp1=~s/ /__SPACE__/g;
> > $tmp2=~s/([\(\)])/\\$1/g;
> > $line=~s/$tmp2/$tmp1/; <- needs to replace meta-
> > characters in $tmp2
> > }
> > @tmp=split /\s+/, $line;
> > foreach $i (0..$#tmp) {
> > $tmp[$i]=~s/__SPACE__/ /g;
> > $tmp[$i]=~s/__EMPTY__//g;
> > // Store data
> > }
>
> > Substitue "" with __EMPTY__
> > While line matches ".*?" (non-greedy match), remember the content
> > between the quotes.
> > Assign this content to $tmp1 and $tmp2. Remove " from $tmp1, Replace '
> > ' with __SPACE__.
> > Replace metacharacters of $tmp2 with escape, ie (meta) to \(meta\).
> > Substition of $tmp2 with $tmp1 (non-global).
> > Do a split /\s+/,
> > Replace __EMPTY__ with empty string
> > Replace __SPACE__ with " ".
>
> > Does you one have a neater and more efficient way either by split of
> > regexp?
>
> > Thanks
> > Shu Teng
