From: Kev Jackson <kevin.jackson@...>
Date: 2005-10-06T19:54:12+09:00
Subject: regexp to replace comma in text


given the following input:

"INSERT INTO PROJECT ( PROJECT_ID, PROJECTTITLE, PROJECTNO, PROJECTDATE, 
CATEGORY, SECTOR, SECTION, DEPARTMENT, LOCATION, STATUS, 
COMPLETIONSTATUS, CLIENT, TYPE ) VALUES ( 2319, 'SKIM PERPINDAHAN DAN 
PERUMAHAN KAMPONG RATAIE, PERUMAHAN, KAMPONG RATAIE HOUSING CONTRACT H-3 
(64 HOUSES)', 'AD520/0105',  TO_Date( '01/01/1981 12:00:00 AM', 
'MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS AM'), '2', '2', 'T', 'G', 'D', 'D', NULL, NULL, 
NULL, 3000000, 'Y', 2);"

How would you replace the commas embedded in the strings in the SQL?

I'm struggling with something like:
line.sub!(/(VALUES \(\s*\d+,\s*\'[\w\&\-\s]+)\',/,'\1')

to find the first 'string' after the VALUES and to attempt to remove any 
commas.  The problem is that the input can contain superfluous commas in 
many places and I need to remove all commas in a quoted string (liek 
gsub) before I can split the string.

I can't think of an easy way to achieve this, can any regexp/ruby expert 
help me out?

Kev