ok I see what you are doing. I'd have used a regexp without split as many others are suggesting, e.g.:
perl -F"[:;]" -lane '
print "<a href=mysite.net/$_ >$_</a>"
for map { /^\s*(\S+)/; $_ = $1 } @F;
'
Because in the awk you only wanted $1 so don't need to run the regexp more than once per line (line after the -F implied split that is).
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