I'd prefer it to match any whitespace, not just SP:

$string = "Fri Nov 8 15:00:02 2002:";

my ($a, $b, $c, $d, $e) = split(/\s+/, $string, 5);
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Notice that I also limit the number of results to 5.

As said in another node, you probably want to chop() off the colon, too (or use substr() instead). Also, you want to use variable names that are more descriptive than '$a, $b, $c, ...'