Using parse_line() of Text::ParseWords:

use 5.010;
use Text::ParseWords;

my $line = q{"a quoted, comma", word1, word2};
my @parsed = parse_line(',', 1, $line);
say for @parsed;

Output:

"a quoted, comma"
 word1
 word2

use Text::CSV; # Can use Text::CSV which will switch to _XS if installed
$sep_char = ",";
my $csv = Text::CSV->new({sep_char => $sep_char});
my $line = q{"a quoted, comma", word1, word2};
$csv->parse($line);
my @fields = $csv->fields();
print join("\n", @fields)."\n";

Output:

a quoted, comma
 word1
 word2

NOTES

• By default, Text::CSV does not strip whitespace around separator character, the way Text::ParseWords does. However, adding allow_whitespace=>1 to constructor attributes achieves that effect.

  my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new({sep_char => $sep_char, allow_whitespace=>1});  
  

  Output:

  a quoted, comma
  word1
  word2
  

• The library supports escaping special characters (quotes, separators)

• The library supports configurable separator character, quote character, and escape character

Documentatoin: http://search.cpan.org/perldoc/Text::CSV