Hello rkappler,

Welcome to the community, regarding the non expecting behavior the monks already provided you with wisdom.

Just another idea on printing an array and complex data, I use Data::Dumper:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @new_array = 1 .. 5;
print Dumper \@new_array;

__END__

$ perl test.pl
$VAR1 = [
          1,
          2,
          3,
          4,
          5
        ];
[download]

Take a look also here (How do I output each Perl array element sourrounded in quotes?).

Hope this helps.