Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Thu 10/14/2021 17:49:15 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -MO=Deparse,-p my ($u, $v) = split /,/, 'U,V'; print "'$u' '$v' \n"; (my $w, my $x) = split /,/, 'W,X'; print "'$w' '$x' \n"; ^Z use warnings; use strict 'refs'; (my($u, $v) = split(/,/, 'U,V', 3)); print("'${u}' '${v}' \n"); (my($w, $x) = split(/,/, 'W,X', 3)); print("'${w}' '${x}' \n"); - syntax OK Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Thu 10/14/2021 18:54:22 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings my ($u, $v) = split /,/, 'U,V'; print "'$u' '$v' \n"; (my $w, my $x) = split /,/, 'W,X'; print "'$w' '$x' \n"; ^Z 'U' 'V' 'W' 'X'