This is very simple but I am not able to make it work..I have a string and I want to get only the fourth field which is delimited by space (although the first field may or may not have space before it before it starts..I want to get the fourth field as fast as possible as I have to do it many times.. 
$_="one two three four five six";
#it may be also be $abc="  one two three    four five six"
($fieldfour)=/[^\s+]*\s+[^\s+]*\s+[^\s+]*\s+[^\s+]/;
print "\n  the fourth field is $fieldfour \n";
exit(0);

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but I am not ablre to get it..

In reply to novice by mrt

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