my @last_three = ( split /,/ )[ -3 .. -1 ];
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See perldata (for arrays and lists), perlfunc (for split), and perlop (for ..)

my $string = "apple,banana,grape,orange";
my @fruit_array = split /,/,$string;
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print "$fruit_array[-3], $fruit_array[-2], $fruit_array[-1]\n";
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banana, grape, orange

-enlil

perl -ne "@_=split/,/;$a=@_>2?@_-3:0;print join',',@_[$a..$#_]"
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I personally think that this is homework. I offer my solution anyway. :-)

The reason I think its homework is because its one of those simple questions thats easy to get wrong. All of the monks that offered code so far, (fwict) to their collective shame no doubt ;-), have actually not provided working code. And they seem to have some knowledge. No doubt a little more testing, a live sample of the data, whatever and they quickly would have noticed the oversight and fixed it correctly. But the fact remains. :-)

Anyway, don't think I was any better, I didn't notice the mistake until I did jdporters as a one liner and played with it for a few lines. I'm betting everybody who replied (and maybe a few more, since this'll be at the bottom of the list) are right about now smacking their foreheads and saying "less than three values" :-) (update the grep solution is only backwards...) Cause thats what I did.

Cheers.

PS: on *nix I think you spell it

perl -ne '@_=split/,/;$a=@_>2?@_-3:0;print join",",@_[$a..$#_]'
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UPDATE If anybody wants to see the results of what has been posted so far read the source of this node.

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....

$fruits = "apple,banana,grape,orange";
@fruits = split ',',$fruits;

# last three elements of the array
@last3 = @fruits[$#fruits-2..$#fruits];
print join(',',@last3),"\n";
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  $, = ',';
  while (<>) {
    print( (split $,,)[-3,-2,-1] );
  }
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jdporter
...porque es dificil estar guapo y blanco.

@a = (1,2,3,4,5,6);
@b = splice(@a, $#a - 2, 3);
print @b;
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$_="1,2,3,4,5,6";
@lastthree=grep{$_ if$i++<3}reverse split/,/;
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split returns a list. You can store this list in an array, e.g. my @bits = split /,/, "foo,bar,baz";. In Perl, you can find out how many elements are in an array by doing scalar @array (or scalar @bits in this case). Subtract one to get the index of the last element. Anyway, you can get at the last three elements by doing: my (@last_three) = ($bits[-1], $bits[-2], $bits[-3]);

Hope this helps, but make sure you learn Perl properly. You'll thank yourself for it.