Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!rutgers!mcnc!uvaarpa!mmdf
From: worley@compass.com (Dale Worley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Quoting and Splitting
Message-ID: <1990Sep26.125033.19670@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 26 Sep 90 12:50:33 GMT
Sender: mmdf@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU (Uvaarpa Mail System)
Reply-To: worley@compass.com
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 25


   From: hakanson@ogicse.ogi.edu (Marion Hakanson)

   This has been discussed several times before.  If you allow the quotes
   to be escaped (with a backslash, which can also be escaped by a
   backslash, etc.), then you aren't going to be able to do this with a
   regular expression.  Even if you don't, the r.e. will be ugly.

Say what?  Write:

	escaped-char = \\.
	non-escaped-char = [^\\"]	(I think Perl requires \
					inside of [] to be quoted now.)
	inside-quote-char = escaped-char | non-escaped-char
	quoted-string = " inside-quote-char* "

All together: /"(\\.|[^\\"])*"/

The only thing you can't do with regexps is recursively embedded
structures.

Dale Worley		Compass, Inc.			worley@compass.com
--
Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
	--  Miyamoto Musashi, 1645