The first argument to split is (usually, and definitely in this case) a regular expression. The pipe symbol | is a metacharacter in regexes meaning 'or' - so you've told split to split off whenever it matches a null character or a null cahracter. This happens between every character.

I think what you wanted was: ($acc_num, $ofname,$junk,$olname,$junk2) = split /\|/, $line, 5; where the backslash makes the pipe character match literally.

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

All code given here is UNTESTED unless otherwise stated.