You don't even have to use the regex inside of a split:

use strict;

while (<DATA>) {
  my @elements = split;
  print ">", join(':', @elements), "<\n";
}
1;

__DATA__
1     1234    gg123456789  000-12345-1234-111
12    1234    gg123456789  000-12345-1234-111
123   1234    gg123456789  000-12345-1234-111

[download]

split's behavior with no args will do what you want, with the bonus of ignoring leading/trailing whitespace. See perlfunc.

Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

In reply to Re: Seeking best approach to column parsing by Art_XIV
in thread Seeking best approach to column parsing by vivapl

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