Delaying a split

[HughbertD]

Hi,

I have a string in a scalar $path , I want to split it to get just the file name. I was splitting on the "/" into an array, and then "popping" the last element of the array into the variable, but is there a simpler way to do this?

 

[Rieekan]

Still uses a split, but it's quicker than creating a wasted array.

my $filename = (split '/', $path)[-1];

- George

 

[HughbertD]

Excellent - so the [-1] is telling it to split one from the end?

 

[ishnid]

Nope. It's a list slice. The "split" function creates a list of scalars. The [-1] indicates that you only want the one on the end. It doesn't affect what "split" is doing at all.

A more standard way of doing this would be to use the "basename" function in the standard File::Basename module, i.e.:

use File::Basename;
my $path = '/home/ishnid/foo';
print basename( $path ),"\n";