Howdy discoTab, welcome to the Monastery!

This is a frequently-asked question, so it's got its own answer in one of FAQs, specifically perlfaq4: How can I split a [character]-delimited string except when inside [character]? (I'd link to it, but Perlmonks' link syntax does not play nicely with fragments that contain square brackets.) Your best bet is to use Text::ParseWords, a core module that comes with Perl.

(I'd link to it, but Perlmonks' link syntax does not play nicely with fragments that contain square brackets.)

Here’s what I do: copy-and-paste the link from the browser’s address bar:

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq4.html#How-can-I-split-a-%5bcharacter%5
+d-delimited-string-except-when-inside-%5bcharacter%5d%3f
[download]

apply a few edits:

[doc://perlfaq4#How-can-I-split-a-%5bcharacter%5d-delimited-string-exc
+ept-when-inside-%5bcharacter%5d%3f]
[download]

and voilà:  How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]?

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

and voilą: broken link

"doc://" is peculiar, see Re: how to do perldoc links with special characters (perlmonks faq2doclink.pl)

I use pmbk all the time

Read more... (12 kB)

This is what it alerts :)

[href://http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq4.html#How-can-I-split-a-%5bcha
+racter%5d-delimited-string-except-when-inside-%5bcharacter%5d%3f|perl
+faq4 - perldoc.perl.org]
[download]

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq4.html#How-can-I-split-a-%5bcharacter%5d-delimited-string-except-when-inside-%5bcharacter%5d%3f

Neat, thanks! I'd tried the HTML entities the Monastery usually requires for literal square brackets (which did not work), but for some reason I'd not thought of using percent-encoding. Another trick learned! (And who says you can't teach an old pony new tricks?)

And there's always Text::CSV_XS:

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"use Text::CSV_XS;
 use Data::Dump;
 ;;
 my $s = 'foo~bar~\"disco~tab\"~quux';
 print qq{'$s'};
 ;;
 my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new({ sep_char => '~' })
   or die qq{Text::CSV_XS->new failed: }, Text::CSV_XS->error_diag;
 ;;
 $csv->parse($s) or die qq{parse failed: }, Text::CSV_XS->error_diag;
 my @fields = $csv->fields;
 dd \@fields;
"
'foo~bar~"disco~tab"~quux'
["foo", "bar", "disco~tab", "quux"]
[download]