help neeed in unpack

[uva]

$line="123 456 789";
@w=unpack('A3A3A3A3',$line);
print "@w";

its is giving output as 123 45 6 7.actually..unpack('A8',"hello   ");# produces "hello" right why it is not working for the prevoius one.

[Corion]

unpack counts spaces as characters of their own. You might want the following unpack template:

$line="123 456 789";
@w=unpack('A3xA3xA3',$line);
print "@w";

Or maybe you just want split:

my @w = split /\s/, $line;