G'day Hena,

If you don't want split to remove trailing empty fields, then you can supply it with a third argument, set to a negative value. Normally this is the maximum number of fields you wish split to generate, but Perl will interpret a negative number to mean leaving all fields intact, including empty ones.

In your particular example, you would change your split line to: 

my @a = split(/\t/,$a,-1);

[download]

For more information on this feature, check out perldoc -f split or the online documentation on this function.

All the very best,

Paul Fenwick
Perl Training Australia

In reply to Preserving empty fields in split by pjf
in thread Working of split by Hena

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.