I thought Text::Balanced might be an appropriate module to use here but I haven't used it before. The following test indicates suitablility for your application; other monks (who might have used this module more than once) may have better ways of doing this. 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;

use Text::Balanced qw{extract_multiple gen_delimited_pat};

my $in_string = q{qwe  asd 'rty uio p' zxc "vbnm fghj" 123 4 ' @ & '};

my @tokens = extract_multiple($in_string => [ 
    q{ },
    gen_delimited_pat(q{'"})
]);

for my $token (@tokens) {
    next if $token eq q{ };
    $token =~ y{'"}{}d;
    say $token;
}

[download]

Output:

qwe
asd
rty uio p
zxc
vbnm fghj
123
4
 @ &

[download]

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Help with search query by kcott
in thread Help with search query by htmanning

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.