When assigning to a list, if LIMIT is omitted, Perl supplies a LIMIT one larger than the number of variables in the list, to avoid unnecessary work.

Using ()= you request 0 fields, so in scalar context, you get 1.

print my $n = () = split /-/, 'a-b-c';
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1

Still not a problem (but you knew that)(:

E:\>perl -le"die $_ = () = split ',','a,b,c,d,e,f,g',-1"
7 at -e line 1.
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MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

Except that it won't drop trailing blank fields, as it should. If you don't care about this, you needn't use split.

print $_ = () = split ',','a,b,c,,,,',-1
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→

7

my $n =()= split ',', $str;

er... that seems to give me 1, whatever the length of the string

Am I missing something?

dave