I am trying to get information out from a lines of a log file which look like this: TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 22.44568 -51.55717-97.09864 I need to get the three numbers. Because the last two numbers are not separated by whitespace in this case, splitting on space does not work! @values = split ('\ \', $line); print "TRANS @values[5] @values[6] @values[7] \n"; Can you help?

First problem is that your split function is not splitting on whitespace. It's splitting on a string consisting of a backslash followed by a space followed by another backslash. Here's how to split on whitespace: @values = split (/ /, $line); or @values = split (/\s/, $line); Second issue is how you're dereferencing the array elements. When outputting individual elements, you need to use $values[5] instead of @values[5]. @values[5] is an array slice and could be used like this: printf "TRANS %s %s %s\n", @values[1,3,5,7]; Here's one solution to your problem (which doesn't include proper error handling). @values = $line =~ /([-\d.]+)\s*([-\d.]+)\s*(-[\d.]+)$/; print "TRANS @values\n";

Thanks for the help! I tried your suggestion: @values = $line =~ /([-\d.]+)\s*([-\d.]+)\s*(-[\d.]+)$/; print "TRANS @values\n"; It is still not working on some of the lines, for example: TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 22.44568 -51.55717-97.09864 The problem is that the last two numbers are not separated by a space!

The regex I gave does work for your example provided that there isn't anything else in the line after the 3rd number. If there is anything else after it, you'll need to remove the $ anchor. @values = $line =~ /([-\d.]+)\s*([-\d.]+)\s*(-[\d.]+)/; The regular expression: (?-imsx:([-\d.]+)\s*([-\d.]+)\s*(-[\d.]+)) matches as follows: NODE EXPLANATION ------------ (?-imsx: group, but do not capture (case-sensitive) (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not matching \n) (matching whitespace and # normally): ------------ ( group and capture to \1: ------------ [-\d.]+ any character of: '-', digits (0-9), '.' (1 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ------------ ) end of \1 ------------ \s* whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ") (0 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ------------ ( group and capture to \2: ------------ [-\d.]+ any character of: '-', digits (0-9), '.' (1 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ------------ ) end of \2 ------------ \s* whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ") (0 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ------------ ( group and capture to \3: ------------ - '-' ------------ [\d.]+ any character of: digits (0-9), '.' (1 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ------------ ) end of \3 ------------ ) end of grouping ------------

HI, there is still a problem. Here is the contents of a sample file: look.file: TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 57.45078 -75.02846 -67.41889 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 23.02884-118.41707 30.16230 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 62.93699 -13.52023 26.16759 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 34.22855 -11.29179 -51.75066 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS -7.30446-113.41203 -32.03547 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 3.86039 -40.97996 52.01907 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 91.74750 -37.90217 -24.45767 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 60.97234-121.14732 -24.18033 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS 64.48934 -74.99355 51.04527 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS -9.82437 -59.35365 -63.98584 TRANSLATION VECTOR IN AS -32.63210 -78.87022 18.61702 Here is my script: #!/usr/bin/perl $file=look; open (LOG, "$file.log"); while ($_ = <LOG>){ $line=$_; @values = $line =~ /([-\d.]+)\s*([-\d.]+)\s*(-[\d.]+)$/; print "TRANS @values\n"; } close (LOG) Here is the output: TRANS 57.45078 -75.02846 -67.41889 TRANS TRANS TRANS 34.22855 -11.29179 -51.75066 TRANS -7.30446-113.4120 3 -32.03547 TRANS TRANS 91.74750 -37.90217 -24.45767 TRANS 60.97234-121.1473 2 -24.18033 TRANS TRANS -9.82437 -59.35365 -63.98584 TRANS For some of the lines it just missed it! Also for the lines that contains -113 and -121 it did not put a space between the first two numbers in the output.

The reason some of them were failing was due to some of the numbers not having the '-' that your example had. We need to modify the regex to make the '-' optional on that part of the regex. #!/usr/bin/perl # these 2 pragmas should be in every Perl script use strict; use warnings; # all vars need to be declared with the 'my' keyword (creates a lexical var) my $file = 'look.log'; # it's better to use the 3 arg form of open # and use a lexical var for the filehandle # additionally, you should ALWAYS check the return code of an open call open(my $LOG, '<', $file) or die "can't open $file $!"; while ( my $line = <$LOG>){ # this should be modified to include proper error handling my @values = $line =~ /(-?[\d.]+)\s*(-?[\d.]+)\s*(-?[\d.]+)$/; printf "TRANS %12.5f %12.5f %12.5f\n", @values; } close $LOG; Should output: TRANS 57.45078 -75.02846 -67.41889 TRANS 23.02884 -118.41707 30.16230 TRANS 62.93699 -13.52023 26.16759 TRANS 34.22855 -11.29179 -51.75066 TRANS -7.30446 -113.41203 -32.03547 TRANS 3.86039 -40.97996 52.01907 TRANS 91.74750 -37.90217 -24.45767 TRANS 60.97234 -121.14732 -24.18033 TRANS 64.48934 -74.99355 51.04527 TRANS -9.82437 -59.35365 -63.98584 TRANS -32.63210 -78.87022 18.61702