It would have been helpful to point out that lines 212 and 213 are:
my @data = shift;
my $loop_count = 0;
while (@data) {
$data[$loop_count] =~ m{s/^\s*//}xms;#line 212
$data[$loop_count] =~ m{s/\s*$//}xms;#line 213
$loop_count++;
}
So first of all, shift gets _one scalar_ off the arguments. You can't pass arrays around like that in Perl, you pass lists. If you call a sub with an array as the argument, it comes in as a list. If you pass in *two* arrays, they get flattened into a single list of scalar arguments. Secondly, in Perl you can iterate over the elements of an array like so:
foreach $element (@array) {
do_stuff_to($element);
}
so you don't need a loop counter at all. If you *do* need a loop counter (i.e. to synchronize two array walks), you would be better off doing something like
for $index (0..$#array) { # $#array is the last index of @array
do_stuff_to($array[$index]);
do_stuff_to($other_array[$index]);
};
Also your matches appear to be looking for some strange things. The s/// inside the m//, if it even works at all, is operating on $_, not on $data[$loop_count], I believe, which is unlikely to be what you want. m// should contain a regex, not code. s/// is code.