Since it seems you only want the last few items, you will need the three-argument form of split as you've shown. Putting it all back into one line just requires a map:

my $string = "foo.bar.foobar";
my $count = 2;
my @splits = reverse map {scalar reverse} split(/\./,reverse($string),
+$count);
# --> @splits = qw/ foo.bar foobar /

$string = "foo.bar.foobar.baz.biff";
$count = 3;
@splits = reverse map {scalar reverse} split(/\./,reverse($string),$co
+unt);
# --> @splits = qw/ foo.bar.foobar baz biff /
[download]

That's about as simple as it will get. The scalar forces the string reversal rather than list reversal of each element in the split list. The outermost reverse gives back the original ordering.

--athomason