Using split() with a limit is indeed better. But I still feel like elaborating some on your regex, for the heck of it. ;)

In my opinion, your regex is too restrictive. It requires a colon and something after it. This isn't the way split() works. To make it more analogous, I'd make 
/([^:]*):?(.*)/s;    # Keeping it simple
/([^:]*)(?::(.*))?/; # Making it even more analogous.

[download]
(Note also the s modifier that's very easy to forget.)

Of course, it's not perfect. There are issues about the length of the returned list; if the "extra" trailing element (that split() would not even return) should be undef or ''; etc.

The second regex returns '' as second element if there was a colon, undef if there was no colon. This is as close as one gets I believe.

Just for fun: 
grep defined, /([^:]*)(?::(.*))?/;

[download]
I can't find any differences between this and split(/:/, $_, 2), except for scalar context execution, were you get rid of the old @_ behaviour.

In reply to Re: Re: splitting issues by Anonymous Monk
in thread splitting issues by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.