$ perl -e 'warn 0+(@x = split " ", "foo bar\n");'
2 at -e line 1.
$ perl -e 'warn 0+(($x, $y) = split " ", "foo bar\n");'
3 at -e line 1.
$

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Note that there are *three* magical features happening. First there's the magic of the first argument; if the first argument of split is a pattern consisting of a single space, split splits on any whitespace. Which includes the newline. So, you actually have *3* fields, ("foo", "bar", "" -- the empty string following the newline), so it's the first case that's odd, not the second. It's the second magical feature that's to blame - in the absence of a limit, trailing empty fields are removed.

You wouldn't have been surprised if you had chomped your line.

In reply to Re: Surprise: scalar(($x, $y) = split) by JavaFan
in thread Surprise: scalar(($x, $y) = split) by ambrus

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