From: Tim Bates <tim@...>
Date: 2003-02-21T21:13:54+09:00
Subject: Regexp help: Parsing a CSV file

I've dumped a CSV (comma separated values) file from Excel, and I want to 
parse it into cels within my Ruby script. Easy enough, you say:
  line.split(',')
But it's a little more complicated than that - see, if the cel has a comma in 
it, it gets surrounded in quotes. If a cel has a quote in it, it's surrounded 
by quotes and doubled, eg:
  Test	Te,st		Te"st
becomes
  Test,"Te,st","Te""st"
Now to use String#split, I would have to write a regexp that will match a 
comma, provided that comma is preceeded by an even number of quotes. BUT, I 
don't want the regexp to match the quotes themselves, just the comma. I can't 
figure this one out...

Tim Bates
-- 
tim@bates.id.au