I prefer 2teez's solution; it's the way to do it. But you specified that it should be done with one or more calls to split.

It's usually a better practice when asking for help here to explain what you've tried, and how it's failing, but not to dictate what tools a proper solution should employ. You're likely to get more elegant solutions if you don't limit people such. Nevertheless, if one or more calls to split is the solution you would prefer, you could do something like this:

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature qw( say );

# Warning: Big slurp! ;)

say for map { ( split /\s/, $_, 2 )[0] } # 3: split on whitespace.
        map { ( split /:/,  $_, 5 )[4] } # 2: split on colons.
        <DATA>;                          # 1: auto-split on newlines.




__DATA__
bsulli03:*:32452:5002:barry sullivan,l230,555-6666,:/students/bsulli03
+:/usr/bin/ksh
sbarto22:*:32453:7990:sally bartok,l134,444-3333,:/students/sbarto22:/
+usr/bin/ksh
sbarto25:*:32453:7990:sparky bartok,l135,444-4444,:/students/sbarto25:
+/usr/bin/ksh
sbarto35:*:32453:7990:sammy bartok,l137,444-5555,:/students/sbarto35:/
+usr/bin/ksh
sdemar03:*:32454:7990:sally demartra,S23,233-5234,:/students/sdemar03:
+/usr/bin/ksh
sdemar05:*:32454:7990:bill demartra,l123,555-1234,:/students/sdemar05:
+/usr/bin/ksh
singl04:*:32455:5002:bart singleton,l134,555-1235,:/students/singl:/us
+r/bin/ksh
gomez:*:32456:7990:bill gomez,l433,535-6666,:/students/gomez:/usr/bin/
+ksh
bolde01:*:32457:7990:bart bolden,l444,444-1234,:/students/bolde:/usr/b
+in/ksh
reaga09:*:32458:7990:cal reagan,l455,333-1234,:/students/reaga:/usr/bi
+n/ksh
liu44:*:32460:5002:tom liu,s213,222-1234,:/students/liu:/usr/bin/ksh
ulano:*:32462:7990:sally ulanouskay,s233,222-9999,:/students/ulano:/us
+r/bin/ksh
tran56:*:32463:5002:phuong tran,s111,444-8888,:/students/tran:/usr/bin
+/ksh
mehr:*:32464:5003:cindy mehr,c113,555-8888,:/students/mehr:/usr/bin/ks
+h
ramos:*:32449:7990:olivo ramos,l454,999-0000,:/students/ramos:/usr/bin
+/ksh
brown:*:32459:7990:bart bro,l477,888-7654,:/students/brown:/usr/bin/ks
+h
mojic:*:32461:7990:celia mojica,c242,555-7654,:/students/mojic:/usr/bi
+n/ksh
fisher:*:2915:208:cindy fisher,l312,478-0371,:/users/fisher:/usr/bin/k
+sh
bsulli02:*:32452:5002:bart sullivan,l130,555-5555,:/students/bsulli02:
+/usr/bin/ksh

[download]

Dave

In reply to Re: Help to split by davido
in thread Help to split by semenych

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