The way you have it written,
$cleaned just gets set to the # of substitutions that occurred. See this example:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
my $string = "This is a string with variable numbers
+ of spaces.";
say "original: $string";
my $number_of_substitutions = $string =~ s|\s{2,}| |g;
say "cleaned: $string";
say "# of substitutions: $number_of_substitutions";
__END__
original: This is a string with variable numbers of
+ spaces.
cleaned: This is a string with variable numbers of spaces.
# of substitutions: 6
One alternative for you would be:
my $cleaned = $token->as_is;
$cleaned =~ s/\s{2,}/ /g; # I took out the /s modifier. I thought it
+was only for transliteration (e.g., $cleaned =~ tr/ //s).
A second alternative, if you are using 5.14+, is
non-destructive substitution (with the
/r modifier):
my $cleaned = $token->as_is =~ s/\s{2,}/ /gr;