You are very close. Try making the regex look like this: 
split(/(?<=\S)(?=\s)/);

[download]
That is, use both look-behind and look-ahead assertions, both zero-width. (update: made the above line coincide with the tested code below) I tried the following snippet on the command line to verify that: 
$s="AAA    B   X Y Z  W\n";
@a=split(/(?<=\S)(?=\s)/, $s);
print length($s),":$s";
print join(":",length(join("",@a)),scalar(@a),"\n");
print join("\n",@a),"\n";

[download]
Output: 
20:AAA    B   X Y Z  W
20:7:
AAA
    B
   X
 Y
 Z
  W

[download]
Note that this treats the final LF (or CRLF, if that's your flavor) as a token -- the second line of output shows that the array got seven elements, while the string had just six non-whitespace tokens followed by LF.

In reply to Re: Splitting without losing by graff
in thread Splitting without losing by anjiro

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.