I'd prefer bart's greedy match. But if you want splitting, then split, pop, rejoin: 

use strict;
use warnings;

my $string = "x.y.z";
my @pieces = split /\./, $string;
my $last = pop @pieces;
my $first = join ".", @pieces;

print "$first $last\n";

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In reply to Re: split giving me a splitting headache by hdb
in thread split giving me a splitting headache by Anonymous Monk

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