Hi mwb613,

I second Text::CSV as "the" solution for reading CSV files, especially if they've got things like embedded newlines. It would also help in the case that the input format changes, since Text::CSV is quite flexible.

my log processor doesn't just work with CSVs but I think I can probably work around that

One solution would be to abstract out the handling of records, so that it doesn't matter where they come from:

my $csv = Text::CSV->new({ binary => 1, eol => $/ })
    or die Text::CSV->error_diag;
open my $fh, "<", $file or die "$file: $!";
while ( my $row = $csv->getline($fh) ) {
    handle_row($row);
}
$csv->eof or $csv->error_diag();
close $fh;

sub handle_row {
    # ...
}
[download]

(Untested, mostly a copy-n-paste from Text::CSV.)

Hope this helps,
-- Hauke D