From @pjscott

[This seemed to drop into a black hole the first 2 times I sent it...]

Looks like a split LIMIT of 0 is treated like it's not there​:

$ perl -MO=Deparse -e '() = split //, $x, 1'
() = split(//, $x, 1);

$ perl -MO=Deparse -e '() = split //, $x, 0'
() = split(//, $x, 1);

$ perl -MO=Deparse -e '() = split //, $x, 2'
() = split(//, $x, 2);

5.6.0 and 5.005_03. If this is the correct behavior, perlfunc should be
changed from

  When assigning to a list, if LIMIT is omitted, Perl supplies a
  LIMIT one larger than the number of variables in the list
to
  When assigning to a list, if LIMIT is omitted or 0, Perl supplies a
  LIMIT one larger than the number of variables in the list

From @rgs

Resolved by change #20162.

@rgs - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'