True, but I made the assumption he cared about some of the columns as he went through the trouble of creating variables to store them (though the example script makes no use of them). aundef,<esc>l8. in vi (to repeat adding more 'undef,') was easier than typing out new variable names, plus gives a hint that there are more columns of output than the original command provides, and could therefore be turned back into variables should the OP so desire.

$/  =  q#(\w)#  ;  sub  sig { print scalar reverse  join  ' ',  @_  } 
+ sig
map { s$\$/\$/$\$2\$1$g && $_ } split( ' ', ",erckha rlPe erthnoa stJu
+" );
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