How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside [character]? (Comma-separated files)

Take the example case of trying to split a string that is comma-separated into its different fields. (We'll pretend you said comma-separated, not comma-delimited, which is different and almost never what you mean.) You can't use split because you shouldn't split if the comma is inside quotes. For example, take a data line like this: 

    SAR001,"","Cimetrix, Inc","Bob Smith","CAM",N,8,1,0,7,"Error, Core Dumped"

Due to the restriction of the quotes, this is a fairly complex problem. However, we thankfully have Jeffrey Friedl, author of a highly recommended book on regular expressions, to handle these for us. He suggests (assuming your string is contained in the special variable $_): 

     @new = ();
     push(@new, $+) while $text =~ m{
         "([^\"\\]*(?:\\.[^\"\\]*)*)",?  # groups the phrase inside the quotes
       | ([^,]+),?
       | ,
     }gx;
     push(@new, undef) if substr($text,-1,1) eq ',';