Not the same problem (as your issue can be easily worked around by adding a -1 as the lsat arg to split), but when you mention "splitting nothing" what comes to mind is an annoying bug I was helping someone fix recently. It basically boils down to this:

my @empty1 = ();
my $empty1 = join ",", @empty1;
@empty1 = split ",", $empty1;

my @empty2 = ("");
my $empty2 = join ",", @empty2;
@empty2 = split ",", $empty2;
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So, why is that a problem? Well, $empty1 and $empty2 both come out the same (the empty string), and reversing the join with a split causes the two distinct cases to collapse.

Anyway, just a fun gotcha that your title reminded me of.