AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy is responsible for the comments made by AgentM.

# Add/Update or delete an address
my %hsh;
my @arr=split /\s*,\s*/, $addresses;
@hsh{@arr}=@arr;
# Add/Update an address
$hsh{'Joe Schmoe joe@schmoe.com'}='Joseph Schmoe joseph@schmoe.com';
# Delete an address
delete $hsh{JoeBob Schmoe joebob@scmoe.com};
$addresses = join ", ", values %hsh;
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SQL: "update {TABLENAME} set {FIELDNAME}={NEW VALUE} where {CONDITIONS}"

Perl: read up on DBI and the DBD modules for your database.

Update: Just noticed that you have more than one entry in your addresses field. Bad practice, it limits you. You should have multiple records:

DESPAIR	Iamhere@place.org
DESPAIR	andheretoo@nother.place.org

 create table person_data ( 
id_no int NOT NULL, 
surname varchar(100) NOT NULL,
given_name varchar(100) NOT NULL
)
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And then tables consisting of 1:many data such as email addresses, phone numbers, etcetera. For example:

create table person_email (
id_no int NOT NULL
email_address varchar(100) NOT NULL
)
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By using a 1:many table, you have the flexibility of dealing with multiple phone numbers or email addresses. By placing each in a separate row, you avoid the situation where you have multiple values in one field, which is a violation of First Normal Form, and of course by extension, Third Normal Form.

Why worry about normality? Because the power of a relation database lies in the elimination of redundancy, thereby increasing data integrity, and reducing time spent in maintenance. And as a previous reply pointed out, when you get to the point where you are using DBI::DBD to extract the information, you have fewer steps you need to take with Perl.

Good Luck

-----
"Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt"

How can I pull this peice of data out of all the addresses If I select * from addresses?

According to your description you can't select * from addresses, because "addresses" is a column, not a table. If what you want to do is search for an address that matches a pattern, then the SQL you want is something like this:

SELECT addresses FROM table_name WHERE addresses LIKE '%pattern%'
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One worry here is that this SELECT is not guaranteed to return a unique value.

An alternative is to grab *all* the addresses into (say) an array in Perl and use grep to grab the ones you want. This will have the same problem as above, however.

my @addresses;
my $sth= $db->prepare('SELECT addresses FROM table_name') or die "SQL 
+error: $DBI::errstr\n";
$sth->execute();
while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow) {
    push @addresses, $row;
}
my @matches = grep { /pattern/ } @addresses;
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Let me add my voice to the throng that says "NORMALIZE" though. It will make your life *soooooo* much easier.

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor

Okay, so your question is basically "How do I edit a string of comma delimited email addresses"?

One way is to separate the data. Split the string on commas (assumes no email address have commas in them), then split each of those elements into outside <> and inside <>
Edit the data, then rebuild your string.

This seems to work:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $test='A <a@bob.com>, B <B@b.org>, Calcutta <O@thehorror.net>';

my @names = split /\s?,\s?/, $test;   #split apart
$_ = [split /\s(?=<)/, $_] for (@names); #make array refs of each
# Above happily learned from merlyn
foreach my $name (@names) {
        foreach (@{$name}){
                print "--$_--";
        }
        print "\n";
}
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It outputs:

--A----<a@bob.com>--
--B----<B@b.org>--
--Calcutta----<O@thehorror.net>--
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And of course, you can edit that as you wish. Of course, if you KNOW one element, it'd be better to use a hash

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $test='A <a@bob.com>, B <B@b.org>, Calcutta <O@thehorror.net>';

my %names = split /,\s|\s(?=<)/, $test;   #split apart

foreach my $name (keys (%names)) {
        print "$name==$names{$name}\n";
}
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This also works, and allows you to access (and modify) $names{Joe Schmoe}

Rebuilding your original list is even easier after you modify it.

my @names;
while (my ($key, $value) = each %names){
        push @names, "$key $value";
}
print join ', ',@names;
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Note that all of the above code assumes that:
1. No email addresses or names have commas
2. No names or email address have < beyond the wrapper around email addresses
3. Your list always has the entries separated with a comma then a space
4. Your names are always separated from your email addresses by a space.

AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy is responsible for the comments made by AgentM.

$somename <$someaddress>
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What "pattern" is that? Are you trying to build a regular expression to match each component there, so that you can pull out full names and e-mail addresses from text? Or are you trying to build a pattern out of $somename and $someaddress and match that against some known text to see if that combination exists? You'll need to be more descriptive with what you're trying to do.

If you're trying to see if a string matches your (simple) definitions of a full name and an e-mail address, you're going to have to define (in regex terms) what $somename and $someaddress really are. Perhaps something like this:

$somename    = qr/[\w\.\s]+/;
$someaddress = qr/[\w\.+]+@[\w\.]+/;

if (/($somename) <($someaddress)>/) {
   print "Got a name of  '$somename'\n";
   print "Got address of '$someaddress'\n";
}
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Note that this is generally not the best way of looking for e-mail addresses in plain text. The relevant RFC's describe very complex rules for valid SMTP addresses, and it is going to be very difficult for you to build a quality set of regular expressions that will be able to pull these out of text. You may be interested in Email::Find to locate e-mail addresses, and Email::Valid to validate a sample string as an e-mail address (does not search for it, just validates an assumed address).

On the other hand, if your intent is to build a pattern out of those two variables, to see if a particular line matches someone's name and e-mail address, you could easily do something like this:

$somename    = 'David Nesting';
$someaddress = 'david@example.com';

$_ = 'David Nesting <david@example.com>';

if (/^$somename <$someaddress>$/) {
   print "Yep, this one is $somename!\n";
}
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I hope this helps. Otherwise, please provide more information.

The code I posted above split on a look-ahead for the first < (Which means it assumes your "name" fields don't have that. Note everything that Fastolfe said about Email addresses is true, they're quite difficult to validate/match for all possible cases.