http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=875454


in reply to csv'ish string with parens that include commas

Use Regexp::Common::list, something like this (presuming your strings and all word characters): 
use Regexp::Common 'list';
my $re = qr{
        \w+  # word characters (word or function name)
        (?:\($RE{list}{-pat=>'\w+'}\))? # (optional parameters)
        }x;
my $x = 'joe,sam,x(monkey,lemur)';
my @x = ($x =~ m{$re}g);
print join("\n", @x);

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returns: 
joe
sam
x(monkey,lemur)

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Re^2: csv'ish string with parens that include commas
by ascetic (Novice) on Dec 05, 2010 at 04:07 UTC

    Thanks. Actually, some of the args will be numbers, but I should be able to take it from here.

    I also looked at using Text::Balanced for a bit, but it seemed like using a hammer to drive a screw.

[reply]
[d/l]
      \w matches letters, digts and underscore, so that should be sufficient.
[reply]

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