focal (3) Text::ParseWords.3perl.gz

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.