Re^3: sed awk to perl help

[Moron]

the -F specifies the split pattern, so instead of also splitting by ' ', just change the -F argument to  -F"[:;\s]"

[dcd]

but splitting on spaces too early will change the results from the initial results, plus you won't get the special awk behaviour that you get when you split on <code>' '<\code>

[Moron]

ok I see what you are doing. I'd have used a regexp without split as many others are suggesting, e.g.:

perl -F"[:;]" -lane '
    print "<a href=mysite.net/$_ >$_</a>"
      for map { /^\s*(\S+)/; $_ = $1 } @F;
'

Because in the awk you only wanted $1 so don't need to run the regexp more than once per line (line after the -F implied split that is).