Split Malfunction

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

Trying to read in a file and split into to perform data checks. Format of data is: xxxxx "name " xxx xxxxx "name " xxx xxx xxxx xxx Using </ /> with two space works except some name are alpha 2 so the alpha and 2 are broken up instead of the name being alpha 2 Any advise is appreciated.

Comment on Split Malfunction

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Re: Split Malfunction by toolic (Bishop) on Oct 23, 2015 at 13:51 UTC
If you want to preserve whitespace inside double quotes, you can use Text::CSV instead of split: use warnings; use strict; use Text::CSV; use Data::Dumper; my $str = q(xxxxx "alpha 2" xxx xxxxx "name " xxx xxx xxxx xxx); my $csv = Text::CSV->new( { binary => 1, sep_char => ' '} ) # should +set binary attribute. or die "Cannot use CSV: ".Text::CSV->error_diag (); my $status = $csv->parse($str); # parse a CSV string into fiel +ds my @columns = $csv->fields(); # get the parsed fields print Dumper(\@columns); __END__ $VAR1 = [ 'xxxxx', 'alpha 2', 'xxx', 'xxxxx', 'name ', 'xxx', 'xxx', 'xxxx', 'xxx' ]; [download]	[reply] [d/l]

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Re: Split Malfunction
by toolic (Bishop) on Oct 23, 2015 at 13:51 UTC

Text::CSV

split

use warnings;
use strict;
use Text::CSV;
use Data::Dumper;

my $str = q(xxxxx "alpha 2" xxx xxxxx "name " xxx xxx xxxx xxx);
my $csv = Text::CSV->new( { binary => 1, sep_char => ' '} )  # should 
+set binary attribute.
                or die "Cannot use CSV: ".Text::CSV->error_diag ();
my $status  = $csv->parse($str);        # parse a CSV string into fiel
+ds
my @columns = $csv->fields();           # get the parsed fields
print Dumper(\@columns);

__END__

$VAR1 = [
          'xxxxx',
          'alpha 2',
          'xxx',
          'xxxxx',
          'name ',
          'xxx',
          'xxx',
          'xxxx',
          'xxx'
        ];
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