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 (quotes, backslashes, etc.) 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).

POD ERRORS

       Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

       Around line 250:
           Expected text after =item, not a number

       Around line 254:
           Expected text after =item, not a number

       Around line 258:
           Expected text after =item, not a number

       Around line 262:
           Expected text after =item, not a number

       Around line 266:
           Expected text after =item, not a number

perl v5.18.2                                       2014-01-06                            Text::ParseWords(3perl)