in reply to split every second word
broquaint is pretty much right on. Given your example input, it'll work.
As to removing spaces, the following will do it:
my $str = "Bob "; $str =~ s/\s$//; # or s/ $//; print "|$str|\n";
If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.
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Seekers of Perl Wisdom