This is evil but...

$a = "de0400Newark";
print split /[a-z]+/,$a;
[download]

I'm embarassed to have posted that...

But in case you were wondering:

              Rate regex(Adam)       split      unpack      substr
regex(Adam) 1554/s          --        -38%        -54%        -82%
split       2504/s         61%          --        -25%        -70%
unpack      3347/s        115%         34%          --        -60%
substr      8446/s        444%        237%        152%          --

Updated, I missed substr the first time, that would have been bad.

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)