A solution using split, a single substitution on an array slice then a join.

johngg@abouriou ~/perl/Monks $ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<__EOD__ or die $!;
ABC;123;;;;;HELLO;
DEF;345;;BANANA;12DEF;44,55;4*12;;;;;;;;3;
__EOD__

my $outFile = do { \ my $dummy; };
open my $outFH, q{>}, $outFile or die $!;

while ( <$inFH> )
{
    my @items = split m{;};
    s{(.*)}{"$1"} for @items[ 1 .. ( $#items - 1 ) ];
    print $outFH join q{;}, @items;
}

print $$outFile;'
ABC;"123";"";"";"";"";"HELLO";
DEF;"345";"";"BANANA";"12DEF";"44,55";"4*12";"";"";"";"";"";"";"";"3";

[download]

I hope this is of interest.

Cheers,

JohnGG

In reply to Re: Add Quotes to entries in a file by johngg
in thread Add Quotes to entries in a file by niseus

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.