Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!rahardj
From: rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Budi Rahardjo)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Question about split
Summary: I am also confused ...
Keywords: split
Message-ID: <1991May29.163413.17294@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 29 May 91 16:34:13 GMT
References: <VICTOR.91May28141138@irt.watson.ibm.com>
Followup-To: comp.lang.perl
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Lines: 42

victor@watson.ibm.com writes:
: I'm a little confused about perl's behavior in split.  If you run (on
: 4.003) then code below

: #!/usr/local/bin/perl
: #Test how certain patterns split
: sub test {
:     ($a) = @_;
:     @a = split(/:/,$a);
:     print "split('$a')=(",join(',',@a),") count=",scalar(@a),"\n";
: }
: &test('a:b:c: ');
: &test('a:b:c:');
: &test('a:b:c');
: #end of program

Replace    @a = split(/:/,$a);
with       @a = split(/:/,$a,10);

You will get
split('a:b:c: ')=(a,b,c, ) count=4
split('a:b:c:')=(a,b,c,) count=4
split('a:b:c')=(a,b,c) count=3

: Why is it done the way that it is?

I don't know ...
This is a problem that I have (similar to yours :

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
$pat2='a:b::::::::::::::x::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::';
# contains 50 :
@res = split(/:/,$pat2);
print "splitted (" . scalar(@res) . ")\n";
@res = split(/:/,$pat2,100);
print "splitted (" . scalar(@res) . ")\n";
# end of program

The second split (the one with '100') produce the result that
I wanted (an array of 50 entries)...

-- budi