phpman > man > Text::ParseWords

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 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).

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