split takes a regex as its first argument. The | characters are thus being interpreted as regex alternation characters. This works: 

use strict;

my ($pointer, $id, $title);

while (<DATA>) {
 chomp;
 ($pointer, $id, $title) = split(/\|\|/);
 print "pointer=$pointer, id=$id, title=$title\n"
 }

__DATA__
23||record1||The Title
1054||record2||The Title #2
2023||record3||The Title #3

[download]

But note that I used the / quotes -- not ". This is one I don't quite understand. Using " you need to escape with two backslashes; presumably because there's an extra interpolation pass or something? In other words, why do I need this using double quotes? 

$pointer, $id, $title) = split("\\|\\|");

[download]

I should know this but don't off the top of my head. Looking it up now ...

Without escaping the | characters you're telling split to split on single characters. The result I get when I print using your example is the first three characters of each line as expected.

In reply to Re: Wierd funky problems with split by steves
in thread Wierd funky problems with split by toonski

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