gawk into an array question

[EChadbourne-3av5VAs6qClGBRGhe+f61g at public.gmane.org (Eric Chadbourne)]

> Hello:
> 
> This is not the answer to the question, but another way, as 
> is the way in Unix.
> 
> If one is rusty with awk, this is the perl one-liner that 
> gets at the first argument:
> 
> $ perl -F, -lane 'print $F[0]' test.csv
> catname1.dat
> foo.txt
> foo1.txt
> foo2.txt
> foo3.txt
> foo4.txt
> 
> -lane is easy to remember, kind of like lanes of traffic.  I 
> had to look up -F that defines the separator, in this case a 
> comma.  The variable created by this process is the array @F, 
> so I guess in makes sense to make the separator option with 
> -F.  Inside the single quotes, one could do more Perl string 
> manipulation if needed, like joining with the 3rd argument 
> $F[2], if needed.
> 
> Doug


always neat to see another way to get the job done.  i haven't played with pearl yet.  so many toys, so little time...
thanks, eric c.