Those two solutions differ quite a bit. Something closer to the original would be:

$terms =~ s/^\s*//;
$terms =~ s/\s*$//;
$terms =~ s/\s+/|/g;
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because split " " actually splits on any amount of whitespace while ignoring both leading and trailing spaces.

Of course, if you can guarantee that the input has no lead, trailing, nor repeated spaces (and no zero-width terms), then your solution would work.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")