The second line creates an array for each element of the input list; its elements are the entire input string ($_) in the first element, and the first three words of the input (pulled out using the parens in the pattern match) in the next elements. The first line then later goes and pulls that first element containing the entire string back out of these arrays. Check out perldoc -f map to understand how it works.

Makeshifts last the longest.

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