#!perl -w use strict; while () { chomp; warn "input line is '$_'\n"; my @t = split /\C/, $_; warn "split to [n=@{[ scalar @t ]}]: '@t'\n"; } # input line is '31415926' # split to [n=0]: '' # input line is '12345678' # split to [n=0]: '' __DATA__ 31415926 12345678