I put a single line of text, beginning with "* [", and followed by arbitrary characters, into a $scaler variable.
split(expr) splits it into the two sections "* [", and the rest of the line.
When I put the split output into an @array and print it with foreach, I get more out than I thought I put in. (a blank element at the beginning),
I'm sure I'm doing something stupid but for the life of me can't figure out what it is. 
use warnings;
use strict;
my @MatchFoundArray =  "";
my $WikiHistory ="* [Any garbled crap2345n&%]i";
print "WikiHistory contains:$WikiHistory\n"; # sanity check
@MatchFoundArray = split(m/(\* \[)/,  $WikiHistory ); 
my $indexnum = 0;
foreach my $MatchFoundArray (@MatchFoundArray) {
        print "Item", $indexnum++," is $MatchFoundArray\n";
}

[download]
The output looks like this: 
WikiHistory contains:* [Any garbled crap2345n&%]i
Item0 is
Item1 is * [
Item2 is Any garbled crap2345n&%]i

[download]
So where the heck did Item0 come from????

2006-08-11 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines

( keep:2 edit:25 reap:0 )

Original title: 'I'm splitting a scaler and putting the results in an array. Why is the first element empty?'

In reply to I'm splitting a scalar and putting the results in an array. Why is the first element empty? by meanroy

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