I'm writing a small script for my running club's site to allow searchable race results.

The data is stored in a CSV format file which I split(/,/) on commas into an array. This is all great except some of the data fields contain commas which I want to keep:

The file looks something like this:

1,"FirstName","Surname","Running club, Country",hh:mm:ss
2,"etc.","etc.","Different club, same country",hh:mm:ss

[download]

The commas in the 4th field are to be kept, not split on.

I've tried:

while (<FP>) {
    s/"(.+?),(.+?)"/g;
    (@row) = split(/,/);
}

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but it doesn't work - it picks up the wrong commas. Can anyone help please?

I have a feeling that I need a non-backtracking pattern but I can't suss it.

Thanks folks,

Pingu

Edited 2001-05-28 by Ovid

In reply to Regexp nightmare with CSV by Pingu

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