another split question

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, This is a little trival question but would prove useful. When use split, i often declare every single point split. But if i was interested in the 4th split how can i do this quickly? e.g split the following, but i just want to declare $x = 4th This summer is very cold compared to last i.e "very" i would use

($one, $two, $three, $four, $five, $six, $seven, $eight) = split (/\s+
+/, $_);
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Re: another split question by tinita (Parson) on Jul 19, 2004 at 10:35 UTC
`my $four = (split /\s+/, $_, 5)[3];` the 5 just says split not to bother with more than 5 elements, so the rest of the string (beginning with the 5th element) won't be splitted. then this: `(...)[3]` is a list slice which takes the 4th element of the list.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: another split question by reneeb (Chaplain) on Jul 19, 2004 at 10:33 UTC
`my $fourth = (split(/ /,$string))[3];`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: another split question by pbeckingham (Parson) on Jul 19, 2004 at 13:04 UTC
I have seen these variations: `(undef, undef, undef, $four) = split /\s+/, $_, 5;` [download] and `$four = (split /\s+/, $_, 5) [3];` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: another split question by Art_XIV (Hermit) on Jul 19, 2004 at 14:02 UTC
`split`'s default behavior will split on multiple whitespace, much like `/\s+/`, with the bonus of ignoring leading and trailing whitespace: `use strict; use warnings; while (<DATA>) { print "The fourth element is ", (split)[3], "\n"; } __DATA__ one two three four five six seven A B C D E F G H I spam eggs spam spam and spam` [download] Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"	[reply] [d/l] [select]