How do I perform the equivalent of "awk {'print $1,$2,$8'}" in perl?

Here is the answer to this particular question, although see haukex's reply (++) for some better approaches regarding the wider topic of shelling out.

#!/usr/bin/env perl 
use strict;
use warnings;

my $in = 'z y x w v u t s r q p';
my @chars = split (/ /, $in);
print "@chars[0,1,7]\n";
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Note that arrays in Perl by default start indexing from zero. Don't change this default unless you enjoy being hunted down by your co-developers.