


Text::ParseWords(Perl Programmers Reference GText::ParseWords(3p)


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++;
         }



perl v5.10.1                2009-10-12                          1





Text::ParseWords(Perl Programmers Reference GText::ParseWords(3p)


       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.

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).











perl v5.10.1                2009-10-12                          2


