Your words are contradicted by your example. "ab''c" has three elements delimited by 2 delimiters. $VAR2 in the output is not a placeholder for a delimiter, it represents what is between the two delimiters.

If you want to have delimiters also represented in the output, you can use this:

my @arr1 = split("(')", "ab''c");
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UDPATE: It seems you want '' to be handled as one delimiter, but translated into empty strings.

my @arr1x = split("('+)", "ab''c");
my @arr1;
foreach (@arr1x) {
  if (/'/) {
    push @arr1, ('') x length($_);
  }
  else {
    push @arr1, $_;
  }
}
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UPDATE2: Arrgh, we are communicating out of sync ;-)