note rjt <p>I believe this will do what you are looking for:</p> <c>while (<DATA>) { chomp; my ($s, $a, $c, $r) = split /[,\t]/; die "Invalid string: $_" if !defined $r; print "Processing: $_\n"; } __DATA__ clientserver,00001,AIT,SOURCE clientserve|00001|AIT|SOURCE</c> <p><b>Output:</b></p> <c>Processing: clientserver,00001,AIT,SOURCE Invalid string: clientserve|00001|AIT|SOURCE at 1006854.pl line 6, <DATA> line 2.</c> <p>Just change the <c>die</c> and <c>print</c> lines to do what you actually need.</p> 1006854 1006854