One regex-less way to do this is to split

Uhm, you do know split, don't you? And you do know the type of its first argument, don't you?

Indeed, you do. Your "regexp-less" way uses the same regexp as you're trying to avoid. All you did was to move the regexp from s/// to split. You "regexp-less" way does not use less regexpes, or even a simpler one.