# Inserted newlines for legibility of one-liner run under Windows. perl -MO=Deparse -e " use strict; use warnings; my $x = q[a b c d e f ]; my ( $one , undef , undef, undef , undef, undef , $other ) = split q[ ] , $x; my @all = split q[ ] , $x; " use warnings; use strict; my $x = 'a b c d e f '; my($one, undef, undef, undef, undef, undef, $other) = split(' ', $x, 8); my @all = split(' ', $x, 0); -e syntax OK