fifth word (was Re: [FWP] Fun With Golf)

[Steve Lane <sml@zfx.com>]

Jeff Pinyan wrote:
> 
> On Oct 18, Ronald J Kimball said:
> 
> >  Write a Perl subroutine which returns the fifth word in a string. A word
> >  is any sequence of letters, numbers, and/or underscores. The string will
> >  be passed as the sole argument and will contain at least 5 words.
> 
> Here's my try.  Start AFTER the opening {, please.
> 
>   sub fifth_word {my$a=pop;s/(\w+)// for 1..5;$1}
>             start^                              ^end

that doesn't work, and s/my\$a/\$_/ won't fix it.  
here's my first try:

    sub fifth_word {$_=pop;s/^\W+//;(split/\W+/)[4]}
--
Steve Lane <sml@zfx.com>

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