If you're determined to do it, though, use LWP::Simple to get the web page and use split with some value to break up the scalar into a list, assigning it to your array. (I still think you might as well use the regex on the scalar and skip the array part.)

Okay, let me rephrase.

I have a URL whose source contains a stock price. It always comes after the only "last:" in the entire page. How can I tell perl to print whatever comes after that?

nascent

Note that btrott's solution will assign an empty string to $source if the pattern doesn't match. You will need to test for that at some time. I prefer a regex like this:

my $quote = "";
if ($source =~ /last: ([0-9.]+)/i;) {
    $quote = $1;
} else {
    # do the Not Found Dance
}
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It's a matter of personal preference -- just don't neglect the check! Note also that the regex may run faster without the .* at the start (backtracking can be expensive).

Try something like:

my($quote) = $source =~ /.*last: ([0-9.]+)/i;
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where $source contains the source of the HTML page. You may need to tweak this a bit to match exactly what you want (for example, you want to match what comes after "last: "-- but how much do you want to match after that? The quote, which should, I guess, be a number?)