grabbing specific column perl

Alright,

I'm new to Perl so be gentle. Given the following script:
----
open(file, "<file.txt");

@lines = <file>;
close(file);

$var = print $lines[18];
----

So I'm printing line 18 of the file "file.txt". I now want the 5th column, minus the forward slash. The line looks like this:

TUV 1/ 3.2/ 4.5/ 3.1/

I tried doing:

print $var | perl -pae '$_="$F[5]\n"';, but i get garbage.

thanks in advance.

you are calling perl again inside your perl script. if you want to remove the slash, use s///g syntax.
check perldoc perlretut

okay that post was not helpful in the least. I understand not to include perl in the string, I meant to take it out. any other help out there?