in reply to How to slice complicated string into an array

Is that CSV? Then use Text::CSV / Text::CSV_XS.

use warnings;
use strict;
my $line = q{"word1",word2,"word3,word4"};
use Text::CSV;
my $csv = Text::CSV->new({binary=>1,auto_diag=>2});
$csv->parse($line);
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper( [ $csv->fields() ] );
__END__
$VAR1 = [
          'word1',
          'word2',
          'word3,word4'
        ];

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Re^2: How to slice complicated string into an array
by theNeuron (Novice) on Feb 26, 2016 at 12:15 UTC
    Yes, that is csv and I should have mentioned it. That module is not part of distribution (at least to the perl I have) which would limit the script usability in our environment. But thank you for the pointer.
[reply]

      As a core module Text::ParseWords is convenient for simple cases.

      # perl
use strict;
use Text::ParseWords;
use Data::Dumper;

my $str = '"word1",word2,"word3,word4"';
my @words = quotewords(',', 0, $str);
print Dumper \@words;

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