Is it that the "newline" after the last comma (essentially empty) is seen by split (-F) to be a value in that field, and hence it retains it and any preceding empty fields? Because if the input is line such as a,,,, I only get the 'a' on output (using -l with -F/-a), but if it's ,,,,,a I get all the fields. Is that normal behavior to have split assume the newline at the end of a character separated record is part of the value for that field (even if $/ is '\n')?