my $number = ( split ' ', $string, 3 )[1];

##</code><code>##

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Benchmark qw[ cmpthese ];

our $string = "zero   one  two three";

our $string = "zero   one  two three";
cmpthese( -5, {
	'list\s+'	 => q[ my $num = ( split /\s+/, $string    )  [1] ],
	'anon\s+'	 => q[ my $num = [ split /\s+/, $string    ]->[1] ],
	'list\s+3'	=> q[ my $num = ( split /\s+/, $string, 3 )  [1] ],
	'anon\s+3'	=> q[ my $num = [ split /\s+/, $string, 3 ]->[1] ],
	"list' '"	 => q[ my $num = ( split ' ',   $string,   )  [1] ],
	"list' '3"	=> q[ my $num = ( split ' ',   $string, 3 )  [1] ],
});
__END__
P:\test>test
            Rate  anon\s+ anon\s+3  list' '  list\s+ list\s+3 list' '3
anon\s+  13679/s       --     -13%     -47%     -48%     -56%     -57%
anon\s+3 15789/s      15%       --     -39%     -40%     -50%     -50%
list' '  25818/s      89%      64%       --      -2%     -18%     -18%
list\s+  26330/s      92%      67%       2%       --     -16%     -16%
list\s+3 31370/s     129%      99%      22%      19%       --      -0%
list' '3 31493/s     130%      99%      22%      20%       0%       --