Oh enlightened ones, I have this string of a thing that needs parsed. Parts of it vary in length, but there are some anchors to go by. This example code sums it all up. Can anyone suggest a more elegant (=regexish and perlish) way to parse this? While my method works, it's not pretty. This is all about parsing backwards and forwards from a known middle anchor. Valid assumptions are: - only a single space between fields - the second field can have several space separated words - the fourth field comprises everything left to the right. :-) 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $string = "firstfield second field KNOWNWORD alwaysOneWord then one
+ or more make the last field";

my $field1 = ( split / /, $string)[0];
my $field2 = substr($string, length("$field1 "), index($string, "KNOWN
+WORD") - length("$field1 "));
my @temp = split / /, substr($string,  index($string, "KNOWNWORD")+len
+gth("KNOWNWORD"));
my $field3 = $temp[1];
my $field4 = join ' ', @temp[2..$#temp];

print "field1: $field1\n";
print "field2: $field2\n";
print "field3: $field3\n";
print "field4: $field4\n";

[download]
This prints the expected result: 
field1: firstfield
field2: second field 
field3: alwaysOneWord
field4: then one or more make the last field

[download]

In reply to Help perlifying this string parse-o-rama by balt

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