split()

split is another handy function in perl to split lines into list of space seperated words by default.We can use any delimiter to split any part of line.

For example:

while( my $line = <fh> )  

{
        chomp($line);
        $line =~ s/^\s+//;    # trim leading space               
        $line =~ s/\s+$//;    # trim trailing space
        $line =~ s/^\s+$//;   # trim blank lines
        next unless($line);   # if line is undef skip it
        next if ($line =~ /^#/);  #ignore comment lines
        @Iline = split(/[=&]/,$line,3); #printing the first three matching fields of the line      
        print "@Iline \n"; 

}