NAME

       Text::ParseWords - parse text into an array of tokens or array of arrays

SYNOPSIS

         use Text::ParseWords;
         @lists = nested_quotewords($delim, $keep, @lines);
         @words = quotewords($delim, $keep, @lines);
         @words = shellwords(@lines);
         @words = parse_line($delim, $keep, $line);
         @words = old_shellwords(@lines); # DEPRECATED!

DESCRIPTION

       The &nested_quotewords() and &quotewords() functions accept a delimiter (which can be a
       regular expression) and a list of lines and then breaks those lines up into a list of
       words ignoring delimiters that appear inside quotes.  &quotewords() returns all of the
       tokens in a single long list, while &nested_quotewords() returns a list of token lists
       corresponding to the elements of @lines.  &parse_line() does tokenizing on a single
       string.  The &*quotewords() functions simply call &parse_line(), so if you're only
       splitting one line you can call &parse_line() directly and save a function call.

       The $keep argument is a boolean flag.  If true, then the tokens are split on the specified
       delimiter, but all other characters (including quotes and backslashes) are kept in the
       tokens.  If $keep is false then the &*quotewords() functions remove all quotes and
       backslashes that are not themselves backslash-escaped or inside of single quotes (i.e.,
       &quotewords() tries to interpret these characters just like the Bourne shell).  NB: these
       semantics are significantly different from the original version of this module shipped
       with Perl 5.000 through 5.004.  As an additional feature, $keep may be the keyword
       "delimiters" which causes the functions to preserve the delimiters in each string as
       tokens in the token lists, in addition to preserving quote and backslash characters.

       &shellwords() is written as a special case of &quotewords(), and it does token parsing
       with whitespace as a delimiter-- similar to most Unix shells.

EXAMPLES

       The sample program:

         use Text::ParseWords;
         @words = quotewords('\s+', 0, q{this   is "a test" of\ quotewords \"for you});
         $i = 0;
         foreach (@words) {
             print "$i: <$_>\n";
             $i++;
         }

       produces:

         0: <this>
         1: <is>
         2: <a test>
         3: <of quotewords>
         4: <"for>
         5: <you>

       demonstrating:

       0   a simple word

       1   multiple spaces are skipped because of our $delim

       2   use of quotes to include a space in a word

       3   use of a backslash to include a space in a word

       4   use of a backslash to remove the special meaning of a double-quote

       5   another simple word (note the lack of effect of the backslashed double-quote)

       Replacing "quotewords('\s+', 0, q{this   is...})" with "shellwords(q{this   is...})" is a
       simpler way to accomplish the same thing.

SEE ALSO

       Text::CSV - for parsing CSV files

AUTHORS

       Maintainer: Alexandr Ciornii <alexchornyATgmail.com>.

       Previous maintainer: Hal Pomeranz <pomeranz@netcom.com>, 1994-1997 (Original author
       unknown).  Much of the code for &parse_line() (including the primary regexp) from Joerk
       Behrends <jbehrends@multimediaproduzenten.de>.

       Examples section another documentation provided by John Heidemann <johnh@ISI.EDU>

       Bug reports, patches, and nagging provided by lots of folks-- thanks everybody!  Special
       thanks to Michael Schwern <schwern@envirolink.org> for assuring me that a
       &nested_quotewords() would be useful, and to Jeff Friedl <jfriedl@yahoo-inc.com> for
       telling me not to worry about error-checking (sort of-- you had to be there).

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This library is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms
       as Perl itself.