Using Text::Balanced

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

Hi,

I'm trying to use Text::Balanced to parse a string that uses single double quotes (e.g. ") to delimit and escapes a single double quote with double double quotes (e.g. ""). Here is the script I've written:

use Text::Balanced qw( extract_delimited );
use strict;

my $line_in = q{""this"" "line" "has" "four"};

my $first_one;
my $remainder;
my $skipped;
($first_one, $remainder, $skipped) = extract_delimited($line_in,
                                                       q{"},
                                                       '\s*',
                                                       q{"});
print $first_one."\n";
print $remainder."\n";
[download]

And here is the output:

""
this"" "line" "has" "four"

The output I was hoping to get is:

"this"
"line" "has" "four"

What am I doing wrong?

Comment on Using Text::Balanced Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Using Text::Balanced by LTjake (Prior) on Aug 20, 2003 at 18:49 UTC
Although i've never used Text::Balance before, i think the problem is that your escaped double quote is not surrounded in double quotes itself. For instance, let's change the escape character to `\`, but leave the delimiter as is. Your string has to be `"\"this\"" "line" "has" "four"` to work. So, if we change the escaped char back to a double quote, it should be: `"""this""" "line" "has" "four"` to be escaped properly. I did a test run and got: `"""this""" "line" "has" "four"` [download] as an answer. I may be way off, but i tried. :) HTH -- "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." --Paul Ehrlich	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Using Text::Balanced by bfish (Novice) on Aug 21, 2003 at 13:32 UTC
Oh, it is so bad when I can't even manage the simple act of setting up a test case. Thanks HTH for clearing up the obvious.	[reply]
Re: Using Text::Balanced by bear0053 (Hermit) on Aug 20, 2003 at 18:40 UTC
You program is doing what you tell it to. Since you input is: `{""this"" "line" "has" "four"}` [download] When it delimits at " the first thing it retrieves is "" then 'this' then the last pair of qoute. Then the remaining elements are fine. Try to format your input like this: `{"this" "line" "has" "four"}` [download] To make it work for double " try a find and replace on "" with " `=~ s/""/"/g;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]