#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $scalar = '1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8';
my @array = split(/\,/,$scalar);
print "array = @array\n";

# do the odd/even split
my @odd = ();
my @even = ();
while (@array)
{
    my $odd = shift @array;
    my $even = shift @array;
    if (defined $odd)
    {
        push @odd, $odd;
    }
    if (defined $even)
    {
        push @even, $even;
    }
}

print "odd = @odd, even = @even\n";

__END__