It should be:

@yahoo = @fields[1,3];
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(See the "Slices" section of perldata.)

@array[EXPR] is a slice. EXPR will be evaluated in list context, resulting in a mulitple number, resulting in mulitple elements being returned.

$array[EXPR] is just simple indexing and not a slice. EXPR will be evaluated in scalar context, resulting in a single number, resulting in a single element being returned.

Note that in scalar context, the comma is the comma operator, a binary operator that evaluates both operands and returns the right operand. That means that 1,3 returns 3 in scalar context.

YMMV, but I find it's a lot faster to add the perl -w switch to one-liners than to debug them without it. I'll admit that I don't always use strict until my scripts get to be, oh, five or six lines long. Mea culpa.

Chants softly

use strict;
use warnings;

use strict;
use warnings;

use strict;
use warnings;

I used to rely on #!/usr/bin/perl -w until multi-threaded win32::console (skip down to Re^8: multi-threaded win32::console for the punch line). Now I explicitly 'use warnings; in addition to use strict;.

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I humbly seek wisdom.