Just for fun and TIMTOWTDI: If you happen to want speed, use rindex and substr.

my $str = "a,b,c,5";
my $i = rindex $str, ',';
my ($path,$value);
if ($i<0) { $path=$str }
else { $path  = substr($str, 0, $i);
       $value = substr($str, $i+1) }
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