my($clliA, $clliZ) = (split /\|/)[14,15];
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I know that the split would work but I split the line later. At this point in the program I am just trying to pull Those 2 fields from the line so that I can pass those fields and the line into my sub-routine. I am trying to do it without having to split the line a bunch of times. Thx though

Not only does split not damage your data, it is much more efficient then a reg-ex. And if you tell it exactly which elements you are looking for, it gets even more efficient.

Trust the monks, re-read the man page for split and use it.

oops well your way is quite a bit faster..... Thx man

#!/usr/bin/Perl -w
use strict;

my($str) = 'one|two|three|four|five|six|seven|eight|nine|ten';

my($this,$that,$other) = (split /\|/,$str)[2,7,8];

print "this:$this\nthat:$that\nother:$other\n";
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($clliA,$clliB) = (split "|",$source,16)[14,15];
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Update I guess everyone thought of split...and are faster typers!

Your use of .* is particularly inefficient. Going with a simpler 3-field case: /^.*A.*A.*$/, it would match "shAzAm" by:

   match "shAzAm" with .*, can't find A, backtrack.
   match "shAzA"  with .*, can't find A, backtrack.
   match "shAz"   with .*
   match "shAzA"  with .*A
   match "shAzAm" with .*A.*, can't find A, backtrack
   match "shAzA"  with .*A.*, can't find A, backtrack
   match "shA"    with .*, can't find A, backtrack
   match "sh"     with .*
   match "shA"    with .*A
   match "shAzAm" with .*A.*, can't find A, backtrack,
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Also, assuming that the fields in between the | characters do not themselves have |'s in them, you could keep it as a regex by writing:

if (m#([^\|]+)\|([^\|]+)$#) {
  $a=$1; $b=$1;
}
else { chomp; die "Bad line: $_\n"; }
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($a,$b,$c) = m/(your)(regex)(here)/;
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I'd use the split myself, but this shows another way to do it, and it checks the data a little, too. Although it does *not* grab the 14th and 15th column, but merely the last two. This could be a bug or a feature: your data, your call. :)

my @fields = split /\|/, $_;
my($clliA,$clliB) = @fields[14,15];
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my $data = "f1|f2|f3|f4|f5";

my @data = split /|/, $data;

print $data[2], "\n";  # prints f3, of course- arrays start on 0.
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my $data = "f1|f2|f3|f4|f5";

my ($clliA, $clliZ) = (split /|/, $d)[1,3];
# $clliA = "f2"
# $clliZ = "f4"
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Alan

update: Yikes, everyone beat me to it... oops.

But nobody has explained why what you did was so slow.

Full details are in Mastering Regular Expressions. However the basic theory is that Perl does a recursive search for ways to try to match your pattern to the string. The match goes from left to right in the pattern and the string. So it first tries to match the first (.*) to the end of the string. Well then it fails to get the pipe. So it backs off and tries again. And it turns out that you are doing a scenario where there are a lot of wrong partial matches you have to try first.

If you change all of the (.*)s to (.*?)s then the RE would be faster. It would be safer still to change them to ([^\|]*)s. Split is even faster, but as you learn REs keep in mind the principle that ambiguity in the RE can result in unexpected slowdowns...

Cheers,
Ben

PS Style point. Split your data into data structures early and then access the data structures directly rather than using formatted strings. In the long run I have found that to be faster, safer, and simpler.