G'day sidmuchrock,
I looks like you might be working with CSV data.
If that's the case, Text::CSV already does what you want
(if you also have Text::CSV_XS installed, it will run faster).
Text::CSV also solves many other issues you might encounter with CSV data;
e.g. fields containing the separator character, such as 800,900,"1,000".
Unless you're doing this as a purely academic exercise, this really isn't a wheel you should be reinventing.
Here's a quick example. I used your posted data and added a bit more to show some features, including:
just one, zero-length element; and the embedded separator character I showed above.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::CSV;
my $csv = Text::CSV::->new();
while (my $row = $csv->getline(*DATA)) {
# Do something with all elements, e.g.
print 'Elements: ', 0+@$row, '; Last: |', $row->[-1], "|\n";
}
__DATA__
1,,3,4,,,
1,,3,4,,,not_empty
,
800,900,"1,000"
Output:
Elements: 7; Last: ||
Elements: 7; Last: |not_empty|
Elements: 1; Last: ||
Elements: 2; Last: ||
Elements: 3; Last: |1,000|
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