note DrManhattan The first argument to split() needs to be a regular expression matching the string that delimits the fields in your data. In your case, the fields in your line are separated by a '|', so the code could look like this: <code> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; my $data = 'gi|12345678|ref|NP_001234.1|'; my @data = split /\|/, $data; my $number = $data[1]; </code> Or more concisely: <code> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; my $data = 'gi|12345678|ref|NP_001234.1|'; my $number = (split(/\|/, $data))[1]; </code> <p>-Matt</p> 251753 251753