#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $sentence = "I am Sam.  Sam I am.";
my @words = ( $sentence =~ /(\w+|\s+|[[:punct:]]+)/g );
my $element;
my $count = 0;
foreach $element (grep { !/\s/ } @words) {
   print "Element ", sprintf( "%02d", $count++ ), ": $element\n";
}

##</code><code>##

Element 00: I
Element 01: am
Element 02: Sam
Element 03: .
Element 04: Sam
Element 05: I
Element 06: am
Element 07: .