#! /usr/bin/perl

my $string = q/allow:test1,"@test 2 " deny:test3,test4 password:"123  
+ 456"/;

while ($string =~ s/(\w+):(.*?)($|(?=\w+:))//) {
  print "Argument: $1\n";
  my @params = split /,/,$2;
  print "  Param: $_\n" foreach (@params);
}
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test:"This, contains, commas",foo,bar
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JJ

Wouldn't this break also on something like this?

$string = q/allow:"bad param:doh!" deny:test2/;
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Not sure how I'd go about parsing this, but perhaps you could preprocess the string, replacing all the quoted text with placeholders, then splitting on spaces?

-- Dan

Try this:

#! /usr/bin/perl

my $string = q/allow:test1,"@test, 2 " deny:test3,test4 password:"123 
+  456doh:"/;

while ($string =~ s/(\w+):((\w+|"[\w ,:@]+")(,\s*(\w+|"[\w ,:@]+"))*)\
+s*($|(?=\w+:))//) {
  print "Argument: $1\n";
  my $paramlist = $2;
  while ($paramlist =~ s/(\w+|"[\w ,:@]+")\s*,*\s*//) {
    print "  Param: $1\n";
  }
}
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However the regexp is starting to get a bit complicated - Text::ParseWords looks like a neater solution.

JJ

thanks for your answer, it's good enough for me since no spaces are allowed in argument name and no commas in quoted strings. but I have a little question since I never used regexps with lookahead assertions, what is the '$|' symbol in the regexp (just before the assertion)?

Thanks again

Hotshot

The $ symbol means the end of the line, and the | symbol means 'or'.

So this part of the regexp

($|(?=\w+:))
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translates to "match if either the end of line has been reached, OR if the next part (lookahead) matches one or more alphanumeric characters followed by a colon"

Without checking for the end of line, the last parameter would always be missed out (it would only match a parameter if it was followed by another one).

JJ

my($allow, $deny, $password) = split /allow:|deny:|password:/, $line;
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Otherwise, I'm not sure how you'd go about this other than doing a more manual parser, where you look at each word and try and figure out which section it belongs to.

Update: Screw what I said! jj808's solution looks mighty tasty. ~CubicSpline
"No one tosses a Dwarf!"

sorry, but there's no constant format the allow,demny,password are not the only paramters and no parameter is mandatory, so that's make it harder for parsing

Hotshot

This is most of the way there, but it will break if you have quoted commas in any of your values. A better (tho' slower) approach would be to build a real parser using something like Parse::RecDescent.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

$_ = 'allow:test1,"@test 2 " deny:test3,test4 password:"123   456"';

my %hash = /(\w+):(.+?)(?:\s+(?=\w+:)|$)/g;

foreach (keys %hash) {
  $hash{$_} = [ split /,/, $hash{$_} ] if $hash{$_} =~ /,/;
}

print Dumper \%hash;
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"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

the package Text::ParseWords with its function quotewords is a very nice replacement for the "ordinary" split :-)

Aha! You're absolutely right. I'd forgotten Text::ParseWords. In which case, replace my solution with this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::ParseWords;
use Data::Dumper;

$_ = 'allow:test1,"@test 2 " deny:test3,test4 password:"123   456"';

my %hash = /(\w+):(.+?)(?:\s+(?=\w+:)|$)/g;

foreach (keys %hash) {
  my @arr = parse_line(',', 1, $hash{$_});

  $hash{$_} = \@arr if @arr > 1;
}

print Dumper \%hash;
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--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

use strict;

my $to_parse='allow:test1, "@test2" deny:test3,test4 password:"123   4
+56"';
my ($allow,$deny,$password)= $to_parse=~/([^:]+?)deny:([^:]+?)password
+:([^:]+)/;
my $result_hash={};
my @allowlist=map {/([^"]+)/} (split /\s*,\s*/ , $allow);
if (scalar (@allowlist) == 1) {
  $result_hash->{"allow"}=$allowlist[0];
  } else {
  $result_hash->{"allow"}=\@allowlist;
  }
print $result_hash->{"allow"} ."\n";
print $result_hash->{"allow"}->[1];
# and similar for deny and password
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CU
Robartes-

Update:After submitting, I saw jj808's solution - that has the better regexp I mentioned, and the commas between "" issue he mentions is also present in my code.

use Text::ParseWords;
%hash = /(\w+):((?:"[^"]*"|\s*,\s*|[^ ])*)/g;
for(values %hash){
 my @arr=parse_line(',', 1, $_);
 $_ = [@arr] if @arr > 1;
}
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