Splitting on / / is different from splitting on ' '. I believe that change would break the original program.... From split:

As a special case, specifying a PATTERN of space (' ') will split on white space just as `split' with no arguments does. Thus, `split(' ')' can be used to emulate awk's default behavior, whereas `split(/ /)' will give you as many null initial fields as there are leading spaces. A `split' on `/\s+/' is like a `split(' ')' except that any leading whitespace produces a null first field. A `split' with no arguments really does a `split(' ', $_)' internally.

Here is an example:

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

$_ = "   a   b   c   ";

print "split():    $_\n" for split();
print "split(' '): $_\n" for split(' ');
print "split(/ /): $_\n" for split(/ /);

__END__

=head1 OUTPUT

split():    a
split():    b
split():    c

split(' '): a
split(' '): b
split(' '): c

split(/ /): 
split(/ /): 
split(/ /): 
split(/ /): a
split(/ /): 
split(/ /): 
split(/ /): b
split(/ /): 
split(/ /): 
split(/ /): c
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-Blake