perl coding ?

[JJB]

I have an perl scrip somebody else wrote.
I am just learning perl by modifying this script.
An temp field $dup-counter contains an counter that is suffixed with
x
as in 23x  have no idea how big of an number the counter can grow
to.
The suffix is all ways one position but has different alpha values.

How do I separate $dup-counter into two new  fields?
$dup-number  and  $dup-sufix

Thanks for you help