Yes, this is Perl not Python.

>Why?

I can assert that conextually, splitting on all characters for split //, $string is a lot more meaningful than splitting on nothing and returning just the original $string. The big surprise actually happens for users (like me) who don't realize the first parameter of split is a regular expression. But that surprise quickly turns into joy.

>In general, split function should behave differently if the first argument is string and not a regex.

Should? That's pretty presumptuous. You'll notice that Perl has FAR few built in functions (particularly string functions) than PHP, JavaScript, or Python. This is because they've all been generalized away into regular expressions. You must also understand that the primary design philosphy is more related to spoken linquistics than written code. The implication here is that humans are lazy and don't want to learn more words than they need to communicate - not true of all humans, of course. But true enough for 99% of them. This is also reflected in the Huffmanization of most Perl syntax. This refers to Huffman compression, which necessarily compresses more frequently used things (characters, words, etc) into the symbols of the smallest size. I mean Perl isn't APL, but certainly gets this idea from it.

The balkanization of built-in functions that are truly special cases of a general case is against any philosophical underpinnings that Perl follows. I am not saying it's perfect, but it is highly resistent to becoming a tower of babble. If that's your interest (not accusing you of being malicious), there are more fruitful avenues to attack Perl. Most notably, the areas of object orientation and threading. But you'll have pretty much zero success convincing anyone who has been around Perl for a while that the approach to split is incorrect.

Oh, also a string (as you're calling it) is a regular expression in the purest sense of the term. It's best described as a concatenation of a finite set of symbols in fixed ordering. For some reason a lot of people think this regex magic is only present in patterns that may have no beginning or no end, or neither. In your case it just happens to have both. Doesn't make it any less of a regular expression, though.