Well, the best solutions are the ones you understand the most. I doubt there's a performance issue here anyway.

Yes, Eily++, I agree with both sentences. I meant "better" only in the sense that I find that the solutions using the s/// substitution operator are just simpler.

And, yes, I would also avoid the intermediate temp variable by pipe-lining the join and the split as you've shown, but, here, I wanted to stay close to the OP's solution.

As for the more awkish version of split using the ' ' string for splitting on multiple spaces, I know it exists and I agree it looks somewhat simpler, but I tend to prefer a regex such as /\s+/ because I find it states more explicitly what it is doing; as an example, I wouldn't know for sure (off the top of my head, without looking up in the documentation or testing, that is) whether it would also split on tabs or new line characters.