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

sub qwx {
    my ( $text ) = @_;
    $text =~ s/\s*[#].*$//mg;
    return split ' ', $text;
}

my @items = qwx"

    this

    is    # possibly

    a     # commented

    list
    # with stand-alone comments
    # and empty lines

"
;

print Dumper \@items;
__END__
$VAR1 = [
          'this',
          'is',
          'a',
          'list'
        ];