Say you have a function that returns a list, like split. And you only want a few of the items it returns. What's the best way to get only the values you want?

If the ones you want are at the beginning of the list, it's easy: 

($foo, $bar) = split(" ", $baz);

[download]

But if they're somewhere in the middle, I typically do this: 

($trash, $trash, $foo, $trash, $bar) = split(" ", $baz);

[download]
Using $trash makes it easy for me to see which values I actually care about.

There are other ways, too. You can enclose the split in parens and use brackets to access particular elements, like an array. But is there a widely accepted method that I'm missing?

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A fair fight is a sign of poor planning.

In reply to Tossing unwanted values from returned list by Sprad

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