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

The solution you have chosen is superior, but to those who would say otherwise, regular expressions have a recursion element which will match nested parentheses. The following works fine

use strict;
use warnings;

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

my @parts;

push @parts, $1 while $s =~ /
((?:
  [^(),]+ |
  ( \(
    (?: [^()]+ | (?2) )*
  \) )
)*)
(?: ,\s* | $)
/xg;


print "$_\n" for @parts;

even if the parentheses are nested further. No it's not pretty but it does work!