Your words are contradicted by your example. "ab''c" has three elements delimited by 2 delimiters. $VAR2 in the output is not a placeholder for a delimiter, it represents what is between the two delimiters.
If you want to have delimiters also represented in the output, you can use this:
my @arr1 = split("(')", "ab''c");
UDPATE: It seems you want '' to be handled as one delimiter, but translated into empty strings.
my @arr1x = split("('+)", "ab''c");
my @arr1;
foreach (@arr1x) {
if (/'/) {
push @arr1, ('') x length($_);
}
else {
push @arr1, $_;
}
}
UPDATE2: Arrgh, we are communicating out of sync ;-)
