Re: golf anyone? (taking first field)

[busunsl]

36 chars and handles blank lines, empty lines and lines starting with a colon:

@list = (
  "123 : oain:b:okfbd",
  "",
  "456",
  "foo bar    : df a dsaf asdf",
  "111 :",
  ":  adf",
  "      "
);

$, = "\n";

print map{/(.*?)(\s*:|\s*$)/;$1||()}@list;

Chokes if the values in front of the colon is '0'.

Update: 33 chars (destructive):

map{s/\s*:.*|\s*$//;$_||()}@list;

Update: 32 chars (destructive):

map{s/\s*(:.*|$)//;$_||()}@list;