Why do in two lines what I can do in one, eh?

I have a string "string" with the value say "This is a string"
Now I want to split $string then grab something out of the result in a scheme-like car/cdr kinda way.

I tried the following:

my $first = shift ( split / /,$string );

but perl didn't like it.

Why not? I mean, split returns a list; a list can be interpreted as an array; pop expects an array. Seems logical to me?

Also, what perl commands are a good substitute for car/cdr from scheme? Sure shift is kinda like car, but it modifies the original list.

Anyway, thanks for any help

In reply to How can I use the the return value of split without assigning? by Anonymous Monk

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