Make that

my ($one, $two, $three) = split( /(\d+)\s+/, $line, 2);
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The number itself will be put into $two, what comes before it into $one, what comes after it (except for the leading whitespace, that is dropped) into $three.

So yes, if you use capturing parens in the regex for split, you'll get more return values. From the docs:

If the PATTERN contains parentheses, additional array elements are created from each matching substring in the delimiter.

    split(/([,-])/, "1-10,20", 3);
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produces the list value

    (1, '-', 10, ',', 20)
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I recommend using better variables' names.