#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my $s = '1,2,3,4,"fine",,,"day","today",,,';

$s =~ s/['"]//g;   #no quotes

my @s = split(/,/,$s);

print Dumper \@s;
__END__
$VAR1 = [
          '1',
          '2',
          '3',
          '4',
          'fine',
          '',
          '',
          'day',
          'today'
        ];