Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes

slugger415 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Might be a dumb question, but is there a module or some easy method to parse pipe-delimited text strings that might actually contain a pipe character?

Yes it's easy to use split to split up a string, but my text contains some real pipe characters. It uses the Excel-type formatting where double-quotes surround the whole string that contains the pipe text, e.g.

"A bunch of pipes: ||| right here"|next column|last column
[download]

I can bend my brain trying to do this with regex's but then I'd have to account for other characters such as double quotes, and I'm betting someone has figured this out already. I know CSV parsers can handle this sort of thing, maybe there's a CSV parser that allows different delimiters?

thanks!

Comment on Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Aug 10, 2019 at 00:38 UTC
I know CSV parsers can handle this sort of thing ... You're right: Text::CSV and Text::CSV_XS (update: the latter maintained by our own Tux). Give a man a fish: `<%-{-{-{-<`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by soonix (Chancellor) on Aug 10, 2019 at 12:32 UTC
AnomalousMonk implied it, I tell you explicitly: both Text::CSV and Text::CSV_XS can handle vertical-bar-separated-values, the options to control this behaviour are `sep_char` and `sep`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Aug 10, 2019 at 12:41 UTC
I guess you want to set `sep_char` from Text::CSV to something useful. See also Re: Transpose a file. Regards, Karl ŤThe Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostropheť `perl -MCrypt::CBC -E 'say Crypt::CBC->new(-key=>'kgb',-cipher=>"Blowfish")->decrypt_hex($ENV{KARL});'`Help	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by daxim (Curate) on Aug 10, 2019 at 07:10 UTC
Data::Record	[reply]
Re: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by slugger415 (Monk) on Aug 12, 2019 at 18:49 UTC
Another (dumb) q (sorry, CSV newbie here): I can see how to use Text::CSV to parse files, but how do I parse an array? All I see is `while (my $row = $csv->getline ($fh))` from a $fh file handle.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by haukex (Archbishop) on Aug 12, 2019 at 19:00 UTC
I can see how to use Text::CSV to parse files, but how do I parse an array? `$csv->parse($string) or die "failed to parse '$string'"; my @fields = $csv->fields;` [download] Update: I assume you meant how to parse a string instead of an array. If not, please show (with code!) what you mean.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by slugger415 (Monk) on Aug 12, 2019 at 19:47 UTC
Yes that was what I meant (an array of strings) and was looking for, thank you!	[reply]
Re: Parsing pipe-delimited text that contains pipes by slugger415 (Monk) on Aug 12, 2019 at 17:55 UTC
So easy, thanks all!	[reply]