C:\test>p1
our $s = join ' ', 'aa'..'zz';;
cmpthese -3, { 
    split => q[ $_=$s; my $n = @{[ split ]}; ], 
    regex => q[ $_=$s; my $n = () = /\S+/g;  ] 
};;
        Rate regex split
regex  546/s    --  -50%
split 1102/s  102%    --