Splits and pipes

cens has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I think that I found a strange exception in the split function, and was wondering if someone can tell me why this happens. Basically, I have a very simple split finction:

($acc_num, $ofname,$junk,$olname,$junk2) = split /|/, $line, 5;
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to split up a pipe delimited list. Like this:

AccountKey|Given|MiddleName1|Surname|GeoCity
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Instead of the expected results, I get the result of having each variable in the array being one digit of the AccountKey. I have never seen this before and understand that I can sub commas for pipes rather quickly, but I was hoping to see if anyone knew why pipes are so special in this context.
Thanks,
cens

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Re: Splits and pipes by bobn (Chaplain) on Sep 06, 2003 at 21:23 UTC
The first argument to split is (usually, and definitely in this case) a regular expression. The pipe symbol \| is a metacharacter in regexes meaning 'or' - so you've told split to split off whenever it matches a null character or a null cahracter. This happens between every character. I think what you wanted was: `($acc_num, $ofname,$junk,$olname,$junk2) = split /\\|/, $line, 5;` where the backslash makes the pipe character match literally. --Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com All code given here is UNTESTED unless otherwise stated.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Splits and pipes by cens (Novice) on Sep 06, 2003 at 21:26 UTC
Man, I don't know how I missed that... should have known better. Thanks.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Splits and pipes by bobn (Chaplain) on Sep 06, 2003 at 21:30 UTC
I don't miss that one much anymore since the day I spent hours trying to ffigure out why split(/./, $ip_address) wouldn't work right. Complete aggravation is a good memory aid! --Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com All code given here is UNTESTED unless otherwise stated.	[reply]