Also, assuming that the fields in between the | characters do not themselves have |'s in them, you could keep it as a regex by writing: 

if (m#([^\|]+)\|([^\|]+)$#) {
  $a=$1; $b=$1;
}
else { chomp; die "Bad line: $_\n"; }

[download]
Note that this is better than just just saying 
($a,$b,$c) = m/(your)(regex)(here)/;

[download]
because a line that does not fit your idea of what should be there (in other words, if the regex fails) will put nothing into the variables on the left.

I'd use the split myself, but this shows another way to do it, and it checks the data a little, too. Although it does *not* grab the 14th and 15th column, but merely the last two. This could be a bug or a feature: your data, your call. :)

In reply to Re: There has to be an easier way... by turnstep
in thread There has to be an easier way... by bxjoh

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