You could do that with an array slice:

use Data::Dumper;
my (@array, $scalar);
($scalar, @array[0..3]) = qw/a b c d/;
print Dumper \@array;
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$VAR1 = [
          'b',
          'c',
          'd',
          undef
        ];
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Since it's to read a file with *custom separator* separated values, maybe Text::CSV could suit you as well.