Ruby: How can I process a CSV file with “bad commas”?

Question

I need to process a CSV file from FedEx.com containing shipping history. Unfortunately FedEx doesn\'t seem to actually test its CSV files as it doesn\'t quote strings that have

Answer 1

you can use a negative lookahead

>> "foo,bar,baz,pop, blah,foobar".split(/,(?![ \t])/)
=> ["foo", "bar", "baz", "pop, blah", "foobar"]