note allolex <blockquote><em> so I was looking for a simpler, array-manipulation method of extracting the last item from a variable length array. </em></blockquote> <p> This made me think of pop() as yet another approach to getting the right field from the array. </p> <code> my $rec = 'a b c d e f 96'; my @a = split /\s+/, $rec; printf "ads = %s\n", pop @a; </code> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-211693"> <p> --<br /> Damon Allen Davison<br /> <a href="http://www.allolex.net">http://www.allolex.net</a> </p> </div></div> 762725 762725