$string =~ /((\w|'|-)+)/g

##</code><code>##

$string =~ /([-\w']+)/g

##</code><code>##

$string =~ /(\w+[-']?\w+)/g

##</code><code>##

$string =~ /(\w+[-']?\w+|\w)/g

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

$/ = undef;
my $string = <DATA>;
while ($string =~ /(\w+[-']?\w+|\w)/g) {
        print "Word: <$1>\n";
}
__DATA__
This is a sentence with words that're different from other words.  
They have apostrophes in them (') and dashes, or dash-like characters
(-).