Well, if you KNOW there will always be 4 fields, then hardcode that in your regex:

m/^([^,]*),([^,]*),([^,]*),([^,]*)$/;
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A warning: that regex wouldn't work right if there was comma embedded in quotes in one of the fields. I'd recommend using the Text::CSV_XS module, but as you state that you aren't actually using Perl...

Later