$ perl -E 'say for split /\W+/, " THIS is a variable number of words, spaces  and  punctuation. "'

THIS
is
a
variable
number
of
words
spaces
and
punctuation

##</code><code>##

$ perl -E 'say for split /[ ,.]+/, " THIS is a variable number of words, spaces  and  punctuation. " =~ s/^[ ,.]*//r'
THIS
is
a
variable
number
of
words
spaces
and
punctuation