By specifying a space, you are telling split to break the string apart wherever it sees a space.

Almost. A literal space is a special case. It splits on whitespace like /\s+/ but it doesn't return a null field when there is leading whitespace. So, it is just like split with no arguments but it allows you to specify the variable instead of using $_.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";