use warnings;
use strict;

use Data::Dumper;

my $value = "A\tB\tC\tD\tE\tF\t\t\t\t";
my @flds = split(/\t/,$value);

for (0..16){
    $flds[$_] = undef if ! defined $flds[$_];
}

$flds[8] = 0;

print Dumper \@flds;