Comma delimited ASCII

[Timothy Grant]

Hi all,

I'm working on a project where I get a stream of comma delimited ASCII that
needs to be parsed. This seems like a perfect use of regexes somewhere, but
I am stumped as how to best process the data. The problem is that there are
often , characters within the delimiting quotation marks. I know that this
must be a regular occurrence, but I don't find anthing in the archives for a
practical approach to parsing the data.

"This","is","a","sample","data, set","there", "are",
"also",1,2,3,4,"numbers"

So, how does one tear this apart? if it weren't for the comma between 'data'
and 'set', I'd split on the , character. Splitting on "," or ," or ", all
work except they don't handle the numbers.

Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!


-- 
Stand Fast,
    tjg.

Timothy Grant                         tjg at exceptionalminds.com
Chief Technology Officer              www.exceptionalminds.com
Red Hat Certified Engineer                      (503) 246-3630
Avalon Technology Group, Inc.               fax (503) 246-3124
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