# the substrings might be single or double qouted
my $string = q("one","two","three");

# the obvious variations on direct assignment don't work:
my @arr1 = ("$string");
my @arr2 = "$string";
my @arr3 = {"$string"};
# etc

# these work, but:
# I don't want to use string eval
my @array = eval $string;

# and this kind of stuff just gets ugly
$string =~ s/^[\'\"]//;
$string =~ s/[\'\"]$//;
my @array2 = split(/[\'\"],[\'\"]/, $string);

# is there a better way? 

use Data::Dumper;
print "\nThis is what I'm looking for:\n";
print Dumper \@array;
print "\nNot This: \n";
print Dumper \@arr1;