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

my $line = "this- is-aline  - one-  two  ";
my @array = split (/-/,$line);
foreach (@array)
{
   s/\s+$//g;  #throw away tailing whitespace
   s/^\s+//g;  #throw away leading whitespace
   print "$_\n";
}
__END__
PRINTS:
this
is
aline
one
two