What is the simplest way to print a field, as in $3 does in awk

[Anonymous Monk]

What is the simplest method in perl of achieving the following from awk?

awk '
  $2 ~ /localhost/ {
    print $0
  }
' /etc/hosts

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

[jmcnamara]

Use the -a switch to autosplit to @F.

    perl -lane 'print if $F[1] =~ /localhost/' /etc/hosts

or     perl -lne 'print if /localhost/' /etc/hosts --
John.

[projekt21]

cat /etc/hosts | perl -ne 'print if (split(/\s+/,$_))[1] =~ localhost'