I have a database with a number of fields containing comma separated values. I need to split these fields in Perl, which is straightforward enough except that some of the values are followed by nested CSVs contained in brackets that I do not want to split.
Example:
recycling, environmental science, interdisciplinary (e.g., consumerism, waste management, chemistry, toxicology, government policy, and ethics), consumer education
Splitting on ", " gives me:
recycling
environmental science
interdisciplinary (e.g.
consumerism
waste management
chemistry
toxicology
government policy
and ethics)
consumer education
What I want is:
recycling
environmental science
interdisciplinary (e.g., consumerism, waste management, chemistry, toxicology, government policy, and ethics)
consumer education
Can any Perl regex(perts) lend a hand?
I have tried modifying a regex string I found in a similar SO post which returns no results:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $s = q{recycling, environmental science, interdisciplinary (e.g., consumerism, waste management, chemistry, toxicology, government policy, and ethics), consumer education};
my @parts = $s =~ m{\A(\w+) ([0-9]) (\([^\(]+\)) (\w+) ([0-9]) ([0-9]{2})};
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \@parts;
Try this:
my $s = q{recycling, environmental science, interdisciplinary (e.g., consumerism, waste management, chemistry, toxicology, government policy, and ethics), consumer education};
my @parts = split /(?![^(]+\)), /, $s;
The solution you have chosen is superior, but to those who would say otherwise, regular expressions have a recursion element which will match nested parentheses. The following works fine
use strict;
use warnings;
my $s = q{recycling, environmental science, interdisciplinary (e.g., consumerism, waste management, chemistry, toxicology, government policy, and ethics), consumer education};
my @parts;
push @parts, $1 while $s =~ /
((?:
[^(),]+ |
( \(
(?: [^()]+ | (?2) )*
\) )
)*)
(?: ,\s* | $)
/xg;
print "$_\n" for @parts;
even if the parentheses are nested further. No it's not pretty but it does work!
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