I made this change to Text::ParseWords to accomodate an unfortunate input file.. are there any side effects to be worried about? I needed Text::ParseWords to find & return null fields. I have tested it in a couple different contexts and haven't found any unexpected horrors yet. 
--- /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/Text/ParseWords.pm     2002-09-01 21:14:22.00
+0000000 -0700
+++ /home/selena/perl/Text/ParseWords.pm        2003-10-21 19:00:43.00
+0000000 -0700
@@ -67,6 +67,8 @@
                      (\Z(?!\n)|(?-x:$delimiter)|(?!^)(?=["']))  
                                                # plus EOL, delimiter,
+ or quote
                       ([\000-\377]*)          # the rest
+                      |                       # --OR--
+                       ($delimiter)
                      /x;                      # extended layout
        return() unless( $quote || length($unquoted) || length($delim)
+);

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In case you aren't interested in applying the patch, the whole regex - change is at the second --OR-- comment: 
 ($quote, $quoted, undef, $unquoted, $delim, undef) =
    $line =~ m/^(["'])                 # a $quote
              ((?:\\.|(?!\1)[^\\])*)   # and $quoted text
              \1                       # followed by the same quote
              ([\000-\377]*)           # and the rest
              |                        # --OR--
              ^((?:\\.|[^\\"'])*?)     # an $unquoted text
              (\Z(?!\n)|(?-x:$delimiter)|(?!^)(?=["']))
                                       # plus EOL, delimiter, or quote
              ([\000-\377]*)           # the rest
              |                        # --OR--
              ($delimiter)
              /x;                      # extended layout

[download]

Edit by tye, mention module in title, link to module

In reply to small change to Text::ParseWords - evil consequences? by selena

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