Nagarjuna has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

The following perl code should print
A B:C D
A B
C D
but instead it prints
A B:C D
A
B
C
D

$t = "A B:C D";
@a =split(/:/, $t);
print $t. "\n";
foreach $b (<@a>) { print $b ."\n";}

I have used split before and never noticed such behavior.
I got the same problem on perl v5.6.1 running on Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla) (2.4.33.2)
and
perl v5.14.2 running on Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS (3.5.0-54-generic)

Am I missing something ? Thank you

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: split(/:/, $t) splits also on white space
by Loops (Curate) on Sep 25, 2014 at 11:25 UTC

    As implied in the answer above, if you simply change (<@a>) to (@a) in your foreach loop, your code will work as you desire.

    With the angle brackets the elements of the @a array ("A B", "C D") are being interpreted as a perl glob. Each element is split on whitespace, and the combined result is 4 total elements, A, B, C, and D. That's what your foreach loop iterates over and prints out.

[reply]
Re: split always splits also on white space (Perl v5.14.2) Ubuntu (12.04)
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 25, 2014 at 10:15 UTC
    Why are you using <@a>?
[reply]
[d/l]
      <@a> is glob not readline ... neither of which you want to iterate over an array 
      use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump qw/ dd /;
my $colons = "A B:C D";
my @notColons =split(/:/, $colons);
dd( $colons, \@notColons );
__END__
("A B:C D", ["A B", "C D"])

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        Thank You AnonymousMonk
        for the prompt and exhaustive reply.
        I have also realized how much I have yet to meditate to become a perl monk !
        Thank you again

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