The documentation on Text::ParseWords is pretty sparse, but looking at the tests, it appears to me that it treats pairs of single-quotes (apostrophes) like an alternative to pairs of double-quotes (quotes). Since there is only one apostrophe, my guess is that it is not seeing the end-single-quote, and so not returning any list because of invalid data (in its opinion.

Oh, apparently I do have Text::ParseWords, so I tried it:

C:>perl -MText::ParseWords -le "print for quotewords ',', 0, qq(First,
+Second,Third) "
First
Second
Third

C:>perl -MText::ParseWords -le "print for quotewords ',', 0, qq(First,
+Second 'Line',Third) "
First
Second Line
Third

C:>perl -MText::ParseWords -le "print for quotewords ',', 0, qq(First,
+Second 'Line',it's not a bug) "

C:\usr\local\share>perl -MText::ParseWords -le "print for quotewords '
+,', 0, qq(First,Second 'Line',it's not a bug,it's a feature) "
First
Second Line
its not a bug,its a feature

C:>
[download]

Yep, quotewords recognizes apostrophes/single-quotes as quotes, so you cannot have unpaired apostrophes.

addendum: any reason you aren't using Text::CSV_XS for dealing with CSV? /addendum