Wow! What a timely tidbit of information. I was just pondering the same problem and your link was most helpful. But as I discovered from the FAQ link, the example doesn't handle extra spacing (around commas) very well.

Here's my 'space fixed' version, with checking for single quotes as well:

use strict;
use warnings;

# crazy mix of quoting
my $test1 = q/,   "test with space  ",,,   mary had , a,, 'cake, with 
+cheese' , and, "a, \"little"  , lamb chop , /;
# original FAQ example
my $test2 = q/SAR001,"","Cimetrix, Inc","Bob Smith","CAM",N,8,1,0,7,"E
+rror, Core Dumped"/;
# throw some wild spaces in there
my $test3 = q/SAR001, "", "Cimetrix, Inc", "Bob Smith", "CAM",N, 8 ,1,
+0    ,7, "Error, Core Dumped"/;
# finally a nearly empty string
my $test4 = q/,/;

split_string($test1);
split_string($test2);
split_string($test3);
split_string($test4);

sub split_string {
    my $text = shift;
    my @new = ();
    push(@new, $+) while $text =~ m{ \s*(
        # groups the phrase inside double quotes
        "([^\"\\]*(?:\\.[^\"\\]*)*)"\s*,?
        # groups the phrase inside single quotes
        | '([^\'\\]*(?:\\.[^\'\\]*)*)'\s*,?
        # trims leading/trailing space from phrase
        | ([^,\s]+(?:\s+[^,\s]+)*)\s*,?
        # just to grab empty phrases
        | (),
        )\s*}gx;
    push(@new, undef) if $text =~ m/,\s*$/;

    # just to prove it's working
    print "string: >>$text<<\n";
    foreach (@new) {
        print " part: >>" . (defined($_) ? $_ : '') . "<<\n";
    }
}
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