How to split a string separated by a dot in perl?

[Joel Shank]

I have a string, say, First.Last and want to split it on the dot. I use the following perl code:
($First,$Last) = split "." , $string;
I have also used:
($First,$Last) = split '.', $string;
And:
($First,$Last) = split /./, $string;
And have put parens around it:
($First, $Last) = split (".", $string);
But I get nothing! If the string is separated by any other character (comma or slash) it works! How can I split on a dot?

Thanks for your help!
jls

P.S. This thread has been moved from HP-UX>System Administration to  HP-UX > languages. -HP Forum Moderator

[Mel Burslan]

assuming you are talking about perl, with my limited perl knowledge, . character is considered as wildcard and could be interpreted in unexpected ways. For instance a. can be used to present :

a34
apple
at
...
and so on.

so your dot may be getting interpretted as any character. Did you try escaping it with a backslash "\" ?

[Joel Shank]

Yes, I have also tried escaping it:
($First,$Last) = split "\.", $string;

It still does not work.

[Abdul Rahiman]

Have you tried using single quotes,
($First,$Last) = split '\.',"a.b"; seem to be working for me.

[Joel Shank]

Yes, I've used single quotes. I should have indicated that I am using perl v5.6.0 for HPUX.

I am really at a loss here. I need to be able to split on the dot. I hope someone out there can help me...

jls

[Paul F. Carlson · Accepted solution]

($first, $last) = split(/\./, $string);

[harry d brown jr]

Paul's method works, as I use it all the time to split IP's (though with more variables on the left side). No points here please!

live free or die
harry

[Abdul Rahiman]

($First,$Last) = split '\.',$string;
This works on HP-UX v11.11 and perl version 5.005_02

[meetlesli]

Thanks for example