Regex problem with leader

I am extracting the language codes from some MARC records using the leader
(field 008), position 35 and three characters long.  The code works fine as
long as the 008 does have a language code in it.  However, if there is no
language code, I want to assign the code "ENG".  The problem is my test for
an empty language code is not working.  I've tried a few variants of the
regex, but come up empty handed.  When I print out the empty language code
it is just three blank spaces, but my regex isn't picking that up.  Any
ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Here's the code snippet:

  ## get the language code from the 008 field

  my $leader = $record->field('008');
  my $language = uc(substr($leader->as_string, 35, 3));


  ### If there is no language code in the 008, assign ENG for ENGLISH

   if($language =~ /[^A-Z]/ ) {    ## I've also tried /^$/  and /[A-Z]{3}/
and a non regex comparison of  $language  == "   "


        $lang = "ENG";

   } else {

        $lang = $language;    ## from above



-- 
Migell Acosta
[email protected]