Wrong.
Many people think that, but any string that is not a single space (chr(32)) will implicitly be used as a regex, so split '|' will still be split /|/ and thus equal split //.
See also Perl6 RFC 361.

++ vs lbh qrpbqrq guvf hfvat n ge va Crey :)
Nabgure bar vs lbh qvq fb jvgubhg ernqvat n znahny svefg.
-- vs lbh hfrq OFQ pnrfne ;)
    - Whreq