use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $line = "   X  Y Z   A\n";

my @tokens = split ' ', $line;
print Dumper \@tokens;

@tokens = split /\s+/, $line;
print Dumper \@tokens;

__END__
$VAR1 = [
          'X',
          'Y',
          'Z',
          'A'
        ];
$VAR1 = [
          '',
          'X',
          'Y',
          'Z',
          'A'
        ];