Your problem seems to be understanding split. Any part of your string that matches the regular expression argument will be removed -- only the remaining parts populate the returned array.

my $string = "This word:ding, is:a sound.";
$,='!';

#prints "This!word:ding,!is:a!sound."
print split( /\s/, $string );

#prints "This word!ding, is!a sound."
print split( /:/, $string );

#prints "Th! word:ding, !:a sound."
print split( /is/, $string);
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