Suppose I have the following code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $str = "item1  | item2| item3 
|item4|
 ";

my ($item1, $item2, $item3, $item4, $item5) = split(/\|/, $str);

print "After split:\nitem1: '$item1'\nitem2: '$item2'\nitem3: '$item3'
+\nitem4: '$item4'\nitem5: '$item5'\n";

clean($item1);
clean($item2);
clean($item3);
clean($item4);
clean($item5);

print "After clean:\nitem1: '$item1'\nitem2: '$item2'\nitem3: '$item3'
+\nitem4: '$item4'\nitem5: '$item5'\n";

exit(0);

sub clean
{
    chomp($_[0]);
    $_[0] =~ s/^\s+//;
    $_[0] =~ s/\s+$//;
}
[download]

I don't want to have to call the clean() subroutine on every item returned in the split. Suppose instead of five items I had 20. Do I have to call clean($item1);, clean($item2);, ... , clean($item19);, clean($item20);? My code would look quite long. Can't I just use a for loop somehow instead?

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