use strict;
use warnings;

sub ndp {
    $_ = shift or return 0;
    /\.(\d*)/ and return length ($1);
    return 0;
}

print "decimal places: " . ndp ('1'    ) . "\n";
print "decimal places: " . ndp ('0.123') . "\n";

my $line = "apple=";
(undef, my $second_part) = split (/=/, $line);
my $second_part_components_count = length $second_part ? scalar (my @foo = split /;/, $second_part) : 0;

print "done\n";