Your problem may be that the first arg to split is a regular extression -- and the vertical bar is a pattern separator with an empty extression on its left -- which can always match. If you are only wanting the one number you show, then your could use: 
  $data =~ /gi\|(\d+)\|ref/ and $number = $1;

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Note that the vertical bar is escaped using the backslash. --Dave

In reply to Re: parse problem by dpuu
in thread parse problem by Anonymous Monk

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