use 5.18.2; use Text::CSV; use Data::Peek; my $csv = Text::CSV->new ({ sep => ", ", quote => "'", auto_diag => 1 }); while (my $row = $csv->getline (*DATA)) { DDumper $row; } __DATA__ (101, '1997-02-25', 'S1', 31.00, NULL, 0.00, 'this becomes two fields, so no go', 5.11), (102, '1998-03-26', 'S1', 31.00, NULL, 0.00, 'this will remain one field', 6.11), #### perl test.pl [ '(101', '1997-02-25', 'S1', '31.00', 'NULL', '0.00', 'this becomes two fields, so no go', '5.11),' ] [ '(102', '1998-03-26', 'S1', '31.00', 'NULL', '0.00', 'this will remain one field', '6.11),' ] #### use Text::CSV qw( csv ); use Data::Peek; my $aoa = csv (in => *DATA, sep => ", ", quo => "'", on_in => sub { $_[1][0] =~ s/^\(//; $_[1][-1] =~ s/\),?\s*$//; }); DDumper $aoa; #### [ [ 101, '1997-02-25', 'S1', '31.00', 'NULL', '0.00', 'this becomes two fields, so no go', '5.11' ], [ 102, '1998-03-26', 'S1', '31.00', 'NULL', '0.00', 'this will remain one field', '6.11' ] ]