Arrays use (slightly) more memory than scalars. If you've diagnosed his trouble correctly, the cure is (slightly) worse than the disease. Of course, the extra several bytes per array element (one SV per line, as opposed to one SV total) can start to add up if there are several lines.

If it's possible to process on a line by line or chunk by chunk basis, with a limited state machine or a stack of some sort, a while read is the better approach. (I suspect that's what you meant.)