I need to split up a string on white space

my $var = "1 word here another word";
my @words = split /\s+/, $var;
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Also, once they are split up, how do I remove the white space either before or after the values.

my $var = '     some words  ';
$var =~ s/\A
    \s*
    (.*)
    \s*
    \z
/$1/x;
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I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated