Tell me if that would work for you ...

Well, it would work for me, but I'm not the OP, constantreader. He or she wrote, "Ideally, it would be nice if it returned an empty hashref." But I think I understand why this wouldn't work as it requires distinguishing between a CSV record with a single empty field in it and an unwanted blank line, something that Text::CSV_XS can't possibly do — at least not without using the IO::Telepathy module.

Perhaps a better, more generally useful feature would be the ability to assert a specific number of expected fields, either explicitly or implicitly via the column_names method, and then to have some elegant, built-in error checking of the parsed CSV record against the assertion.

After all, aren't most CSV files in the world essentially flat-file database tables with a constant number of fields in each record — else something is wrong?

In reply to Re^4: Text::CSV_XS and blank lines by Jim
in thread Text::CSV_XS and blank lines by constantreader

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.