Dear Most Intelligent Monks:

I have a Perl program that works properly on my ActiveState 5.10.1 Build 1006 (Windows XP) box. I have shown the code and the input/outputs below. It essentially opens a file, goes line by line, and deletes the last comma separated value.

Example of Input Text File:

dog,cat,horse,bird
sheep,cow
fish,mouse,rat,tiger,lion
[download]

Here is the working Perl Program:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
open (MYFILE, 'test2.txt');
while (<MYFILE>) 
 {
  chomp;
  $_ =~ s/,(?:"[^"\r\n]*"|[^,\r\n]*)$//m; 
  print "$_\n";
 }
close (MYFILE);
[download]

Would result in this output:

dog,cat,horse
sheep
fish,mouse,rat,tiger
[download]

What I need is for the REGEX used in the program copied below:

$_ =~ s/,(?:"[^"\r\n]*"|[^,\r\n]*)$//m;
[download]

to use a backslash (i.e. "\") instead of a comma so that this happens:

Input:

dog\cat\horse\bird
sheep\cow
fish\mouse\rat\tiger\lion
[download]

would give me the following Output:

dog\cat\horse
sheep
fish\mouse\rat\tiger
[download]

I have tried putting in  =~ s/\\((?:"[^"\r\n]*"|[^,\r\n]*)$//m; and it still does not work.

I do not want to use different modules like Text::CSV_XS or Text::xSV since I am installing this on multiple Windows machines (Yes I know about CAVA, etc) and think that this should be simple to fix my REGEX to make it work with the backslash "\".

As someone completely undeserving, I most humbly beg your kindly assistance.

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