Some time ago, I've written the following code:

#!perl -w
use strict;

my $file = "anyfile.txt";
my $sep = ';';

unless (open (CSV, $file)){
    die "Error: $!\n";
}
else {
    while (<CSV>){
    next if $. == 1; # kill headline: dirty
    my @list = &ExtractFields($_, $sep);
    print join ":_:", @list;
    } # while
    close (CSV);
} # else
# ------------------------------------------------------------
sub ExtractFields {
    my ($string, $sep) = @_;
    my @csv = &FilterIndexList($string, $sep);
    my $start = 0;
    my @list = ();

    foreach my $j (@csv){
    my $end = $j-1;
#    print "$start-$end  ";
    push (@list, substr($string, $start, $end-$start+1));
    $start = $j+1;
    } # foreach

    # filter leading and trailing "
    foreach (@list){    s/^\"(.*)\"$/$1/;    }
    
#    print join("(_|_)", @list);
    return (@list);
} # ExtractFields
# ------------------------------------------------------------
sub FilterIndexList {
    my ($string, $sep) = @_;
    
    my @sep = &GetIndexList($string, $sep);
    my @hc = &GetIndexList($string, '"');

    # try to find connected " and remove 
    # the positions within from @sep
    my $i = 0;
    foreach (;;){
    my ($start) = grep {$_ == $hc[$i]-1 } @sep;
    if ($start){
        $i++;
        my ($end) = grep {$_ == $hc[$i]+1 } @sep;
        if ($end){
#        print "found at $start-$end: $hc[$i]\n";        
        # kill positions in @sep within $start and $end
        @sep = grep { $_ <= $start or $_ >= $end } @sep;
        $i++;
        }
        else { # invalid end; throw away end and start over again
        splice(@hc, $i, 1);
        $i--;
        }
    }
    else { # invalid begin; throw away start
        splice(@hc, $i, 1);
    }
    last if $i > $#hc; # exit loop if no more " to test
    }
    return (@sep);
} # FilterIndexList
# ------------------------------------------------------------
# Return a list of incices of positions of $sep in $string
sub GetIndexList {
    my ($string, $subStr) = @_;
    my @list = (); 

    my $pos = -1; # startposition
    while (1){
        # search for next $subStr
    $pos = index($string, $subStr, $pos+1);
        # if startposition again or not found, return
    last if $pos == -1; 
        # else push found position onto list
    push (@list, $pos);
    }
    return (@list);
} # GetIndexList
# ------------------------------------------------------------
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It's not the best piece of code I've ever written, and I'm not sure if it works in all cases, but maybe it could help you... But it's a lot of code just for nearly nothing :-)

Best regards,
perl -le "s==*F=e=>y~\*martinF~stronat~=>s~[^\w]~~g=>chop,print"