The question was why doesn't the array "gobble up the empty field at the end?". I was merely showing that an array won't gobble up one or many empty fields at the end.

In fact, an array won't gobble up empty fields at the start, middle or end:

$ perl -E 'my ($x, @y) = (1,2,,3); say $#y'
1

$ perl -E 'my ($x, @y) = (1,2,,,,3,); say $#y'
1

$ perl -E 'my ($x, @y) = (1,,,,,,2,,,,,); say $#y'
0
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Your question only showed the 2-argument form of split; however, answers with the 3-argument form seemed more to your liking.

I expect the underlying problem may be the huge disconnect that sometimes occurs when people communicate in a common language. :-)

You realize that your additional commas are completely ignored by the perl interpreter?

perl -MO=Deparse,-P -e 'my ($x, @y) = (1,2,,,,,); print $#y'
my($x, @y) = (1, 2);
print $#y;
-e syntax OK
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I'm not entirely sure where you're heading with this.

I posted some information that turned out not to be useful to you. I acknowledged this in what I believed to be a pleasant manner. To be honest, that should have been the end of it.

"You realize that your additional commas are completely ignored by the perl interpreter?"

Yes.

perl -MO=Deparse,-P -e 'my ($x, @y) = (1,2,,,,,); print $#y'
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B::Deparse's -P option disables prototype checking. Including it was probably an error given there's no function calls to deparse and this thread has nothing to do with prototypes. You get the same output without it:

$ perl -MO=Deparse -e 'my ($x, @y) = (1,2,,,,,); print $#y'
my($x, @y) = (1, 2);
print $#y;
-e syntax OK
[download]

I occasionally use the -p option. This adds extra parentheses which can sometimes be useful; although, in this instance, it only appears to add clutter:

$ perl -MO=Deparse,-p -e 'my ($x, @y) = (1,2,,,,,); print $#y'
(my($x, @y) = (1, 2));
print($#y);
-e syntax OK
[download]

-- Ken