Here's an example:

I'm using a series of (somewhat fragile) regexes to change that to:

There are, of course, going to be boundary cases that don't work as expected as soon as you start playing with allowing undoubled double-quotes inside of a format that expects them doubled. However Text::xSV allows you to define arbitrary filters that it preprocesses text with, and should do a reasonable job on the above with the following filter:

  sub {
    my $line = shift;
    $line =~ s/\r$//;
    $line =~ s/"(.)/""$1/g;
    $line =~ s/"?,"?/,/g;
    return $line;
  }
[download]

Yes, there is some fragility, but it should be at least moderately hard to trigger.

And, what should the parser do with the following:

"Smith","John",12/31/1962,"Author of "How to Break Programs" and other
+ books,"Bugger"
"Smith","John",12/31/1962,Author of "How to Break Programs" and other 
+books,"Bugger"
"Smith","John",12/31/1962,'Author of "How to Break Programs" and other
+ books,"Bugger"
"Smith","John",12/31/1962,'Author of "How to Break Programs" and other
+ books',"Bugger"
[download]

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose

I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested

And, what should the parser do with the following:

"Smith","John",12/31/1962,"Author of "How to Break Programs" and other
+ books,"Bugger"
"Smith","John",12/31/1962,"Author of ""How to Break Programs"" and oth
+er books,"Bugger"
[download]

"Smith","John",12/31/1962,Author of "How to Break Programs" and other 
+books,"Bugger"
"Smith","John",12/31/1962,Author of ""How to Break Programs"" and othe
+r books,"Bugger"
[download]

"Smith","John",12/31/1962,'Author of "How to Break Programs" and other
+ books,"Bugger"
(Reject?)
[download]

"Smith","John",12/31/1962,'Author of "How to Break Programs" and other
+ books',"Bugger"
(Reject?)
[download]

(I haven't encountered any improperly quoted data, just data that doesn't escape embedded delimiters.)

Wally Hartshorn