Im some what a perl noob so bear with me on this one. Im trying to parse out a csv file and store the contents of the various columns in a hash. The problem is that everywhere I have looked the various solutions are talking about csv files where the top row is the column headings and the columns are all in one line kinda like: 
heading 1,    heading 2,    heading 3
data,         data,         data
data,         data,         data

[download]
I have a csv file were the different columns and headings are all over the place, such as: 
heading 1,   heading 2
data,        data
data,

heading 3
data

heading 4,     heading 5
data,          data

[download]
Not sure if this will make sense or not, but basically I want to be able to call the heading name and get data that is in its column, sometimes there will be 20 lines of data and sometimes it just one data item in the column. Once i am able to store the data and call it I want to be able to create an xml file using the data. All of the heading names are enclosed with <> if that helps. Any ideas on a simple way to do this?

In reply to Help parsing a complicated csv by rmfin730

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.