#!/usr/bin/perl

use Getopt::Long;
GetOptions(
    'thing=s' => \(my $thing = ''),
    'flag'    => \(my $flag = 0),
    'array=s' => \my @array,        # no parens
    # ...
) or die 'options';

print "\@array: @array\n";

##</code><code>##

$ ./646480.pl -a foo -a bar -a baz

##</code><code>##

@array: foo bar baz