while (my $line = <>)
{
   chomp($line);

   my @tokens;

   foreach ($line) {
      /\G ( [^{\s]+ )/xgc && do { push(@tokens, $1);  redo };
      /\G ( {[^}]*} )/xgc && do { push(@tokens, $1);  redo };

      /\G \s+/xgc;
      redo;
   }

   ...process split line...
}