How do I efficiently parse a CSV file in Perl?

Question

I\'m working on a project that involves parsing a large csv formatted file in Perl and am looking to make things more efficient.

My approach has been to split(

Answer 1

Here is a version that also respects quotes (e.g. foo,bar,"baz,quux",123 -> "foo", "bar", "baz,quux", "123").

sub csvsplit {
        my $line = shift;
        my $sep = (shift or ',');

        return () unless $line;

        my @cells;
        $line =~ s/\r?\n$//;

        my $re = qr/(?:^|$sep)(?:"([^"]*)"|([^$sep]*))/;

        while($line =~ /$re/g) {
                my $value = defined $1 ? $1 : $2;
                push @cells, (defined $value ? $value : '');
        }

        return @cells;
}

Use it like this:

while(my $line = ) {
    my @cells = csvsplit($line); # or csvsplit($line, $my_custom_seperator)
}