Perl split list on commas except when within brackets?

Question

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 va

Answer 1

Did anyone say you have to do it in one step? You could slice of values in a loop. Given your example you could use something like this.

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;

my $s = q{recycling, environmental science, interdisciplinary (e.g., consumerism, waste management, chemistry, toxicology, government policy, and ethics), consumer education};

my @parts;
while(1){

        my ($elem, $rest) = $s =~ m/^((?:\w|\s)+)(?:,\s*([^\(]*.*))?$/;
        if (not $elem) {
                say "second approach";
                ($elem, $rest) = $s =~ m/^(?:((?:\w|\s)+\s*\([^\)]+\)),\s*(.*))$/;
        }
        $s = $rest;
        push @parts, $elem;
        last if not $s;

}

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \@parts;