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Text::ParseWords(3pm)                 Perl Programmers Reference Guide                 Text::ParseWords(3pm)



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 delim-iters delimiters
       iters 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 backslashescaped
       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 white-space whitespace
       space 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.

AUTHORS
       Maintainer is 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@multimediapro-
       duzenten.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 v5.8.8                                      2001-09-21                            Text::ParseWords(3pm)