given that the grep for /^$/ was to skip the null first field returned by split (because the first character in the string was the delimiter "/"), wouldn't it be "better" (more readable) to just explicitly remove it- ie

s#^/##; # remove the leading delimiter
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The code as written silently munches all null fields which is fine because we don't expect a directory called null (ie in /foo/bar//rab/oof) but if the idiom is transported to another set of data...

split /' '/ nicely removes any leading white space... it could be handy to have an option to do this for other delimiters.

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my $chainsaw = 'Perl';