G'day lonewolf28,

If you look at the documentation for the split function, you'll see that the first argument to split is a "PATTERN".

Your "PATTERN" is: zero-length-string OR zero-length-string

And, with the last part being totally redundant, just: zero-length-string

The output is entirely to be expected. The split documentation discusses outcomes with zero-length patterns.

A better "PATTERN" would be: /[|]/

See also: Perl Regular Expressions Tutorial