I had quite a long discussion with Lady_Aleena in the chatterbox, as I wanted to fully understand her wishes. She had a number of complaints about Text::CSV (and Text::CSV_XS) being to complicated for simple end-user tasks.

We - as module authors - should always take remarks like that serious, even if the end user might not exactly be the target audience we had in mind when writing functionality.

<cbstream> [Lady_Aleena] My problem is that modules like Text::CSV_XS 
+doesn't open the files for me too.
<cbstream> [Lady_Aleena] Tux, I might use Text::CSV if it becomes a on
+e liner.
[download]

I've heard remarks like that before, but so far always ignored them, as the function/method to do so is so simple that including something like that in the module itself feels like bloat.

Now that I understand what Lady_Aleena actually wants with her data - to directly create a hash of hashes from a CSV-like file, I tried to come up with a far more generic function. Having rfc7111 fragments now, that only makes more sense :)

After a few iterations, I came up with a function that support all basic needs, yet still allows a lot of flexibility. Without going into the implementation, what I currently have done supports:

my $AoA = csv2list (file => "file.csv");
my $AoA = csv2list (data => $io, sep_char => "|");
my $AoA = csv2list (file => "file.txt", sep_char => "|", fragment => "
+col=3;5-6;0-*");

my $AoH = csv2list (file => "file.csv", headers => "auto");
my $AoH = csv2list (data => $io, sep_char => "|",
    headers=> [ "Name", "Hobby", "Age" ]);
[download]

When I apply that to the code on Lady_Aleena's scratchpad, the difference would be somethink like

la.txt:
Jan|Birdwatching|7
LA|coding|25
Tux|skiing|52

code:

my @gdr = qw( Name Hobby Age );
my %la  = lady_aleena (file => "la.txt", headings => \@hdr);
my $aoh = csv2list (file => "la.txt", sep_char => "|", headers => \@hd
+r);
my %hoh = map { $_->{Name} => $_ } @{$aoh};

result for both:
{   Jan              => {
        Age              => 7,
        Hobby            => 'Birdwatching',
        Name             => 'Jan'
        },
    LA               => {
        Age              => 25,
        Hobby            => 'coding',
        Name             => 'LA'
        },
    Tux              => {
        Age              => 52,
        Hobby            => 'skiing',
        Name             => 'Tux'
        }
    }
[download]

I'll let this sink in a bit. Obviously a function like this has a lot of potential, but should it be auto-exported? And is it flexible enough as it is like this?

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