ParseWords(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation ParseWords(3)
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 "ewords() 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. "ewords() 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.,
"ewords() 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 "ewords(), 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 AT netcom.com>, 1994-1997
(Original author unknown). Much of the code for &parse_line()
(including the primary regexp) from Joerk Behrends
<jbehrends AT multimediaproduzenten.de>.
Examples section another documentation provided by John Heidemann
<johnh AT ISI.EDU>
Bug reports, patches, and nagging provided by lots of folks-- thanks
everybody! Special thanks to Michael Schwern <schwern AT envirolink.org>
for assuring me that a &nested_quotewords() would be useful, and to
Jeff Friedl <jfriedl AT 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 v5.16.3 2013-03-17 ParseWords(3)