>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dumper -le
"my $str = q{1,2,3,4,'fine', '', 'day','today',};
 my @f =
   grep defined,
   $str =~ m{ (\d+) | ' ([^']*) ' }xmsg
   ;
 print Dumper \@f;
"
$VAR1 = [
          '1',
          '2',
          '3',
          '4',
          'fine',
          '',
          'day',
          'today'
        ];