Yes! And you can of course fetch several values with: my (undef, $second, $third) = split .... my (undef, $var, $other) is the same as (undef, my $var, my $other)

Note that haukex is right about Text::CSV though, as long as your input stays simple (ie: no field contains the ; character, or a newline) split will do the work, but if there's any chance that your data can be more complex, it's just either to use the module rather than try to handle all the special cases by hand.