Re^2: split and join, what's the clever way to do it

You've introduced a bug. The first arg of split is a regex even if you obfuscate that fact by using quotes, so the | needs to be escaped:

split '|',     $line, 5;   # WRONG
split '\\|',   $line, 5;   # ok
split /\|/',   $line, 5;   # Better
split qr/\|/', $line, 5;   # Can also use qr//
split $re,     $line, 5;   # or compiled regexes
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Other useful syntaxes:

my @rec = = split /\|/, $line, 5;
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my %rec;
@rec{qw( var1 var2 var3 var4 var5 )} = split /\|/, $line, 5;
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Re^3: split and join, what's the clever way to do it by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jan 27, 2008 at 18:25 UTC
Having been bitten by that myself, are there any documents explaining why `split` behaves this way rather than the (IMO more sensible) alternative of splitting on a regex if it's /specified as a regex/ and splitting on a plain string if it's 'specified as a plain string'?	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: split and join, what's the clever way to do it by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 28, 2008 at 01:10 UTC
That would have prevented the dynamic construction of split regex patterns in the pre-qr// world, and backwards compatibility prevents us from doing that now (whether it's wise or not).	[reply]
Re^4: split and join, what's the clever way to do it by ysth (Canon) on Jan 28, 2008 at 02:52 UTC
Not just split; `=~ EXPR` is implicitly a match operation using the result of EXPR as the regex. Though the tendency to use quotes instead of // for split, e.g. `split "\t"` seems to have introduced more confusion about split's operand. (Well, that and the special `split " "` mode.) -- Online Fortune Cookie Search	[reply] [d/l] [select]