#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my $line = "earth, wind & fire";
my @chunks = split /\b/, $line;

print Dumper(\@chunks);

##</code><code>##

#need the grep to filter for truth! 
#basically checking if 
#the element is defined/filled-in/not-blank
my @chunks = grep{$_} split /\b|\s/, $line;

##</code><code>##

#either this
my @no_punct = $line =~ /(\w+)/g;
#or this
my @no_punct = grep{$_}split /\W|\s/, $line;