in reply to My split command isnt working - please advise

This:my @nums = split(/\\./, $sf[0]); is attempting to split the string on the text \.

Ie. You've escaped the backslash, so it is taken as a single literal and the dot will match any character.

Change that to: my @nums = split(/\./, $sf[0]);

That is escape the dot '.' with a (single) backslash so that the dot is taken as a literal.

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