Good call. I don't think this module was in CPAN when I started mine. It looks the author of Text::xSV found the same problem with Text::CSV and took a pretty similar approach. I think that if all you ever want to do in your life is parse CSV files (I could extend it to any character I suppose), that mine is a lot simpler. xSV looks pretty sophisticated and if it beats mine for performance (seems likely) then I will give up :(