Spooky has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to save the field I'm splitting on - in this case the pattern is ewh12345 (initials followed by numeric). Hanging off of this pattern is other data - the records are variable length. I want to split on this pattern (i.e., A-ZA-Z\d\d\d\d\d) but also want to be able to include this pattern along with the data associated with it. Any suggestions?

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Re: saving a split pattern
by moritz (Cardinal) on Nov 03, 2008 at 17:07 UTC
    If you use parenthesis around your pattern, it will appear in the returned list: 
    use strict;
use warnings;

my $s = 'PRELUDExz3456MIDDLEzy1234POST';

my @list = split m/([a-z]{2}\d{4})/, $s;
print "@list\n";
__END__
PRELUDE xz3456 MIDDLE zy1234 POST

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      just wanted to note the alternative, if the pattern should not be in an extra element:
      my @list = split m/(?=[a-z]{2}\d{4})/, $s;
      output:
      PRELUDE xz3456MIDDLE zy1234POST
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

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