#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $s = 'earth, wind & fire';
my @out = split /\b/, $s;
print "$_\n" foreach (@out);

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and if you just needed the words without the punctuation marks: 
foreach (@out) {
        print "$_\n" if ($_ =~ /\w/);
}

[download]

In reply to Re: splitting punctuation in a text by eosbuddy
in thread splitting punctuation in a text by Anonymous Monk

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