Im not sure what data you are talking about that prints to the screen. I don't get any such data, just the return from the function if I print it.

Here's a part of your original post, before you updated it and removed the print statements:

    print "\n-----------\n";
    print "There are ". scalar @pieces .
          " elements in \@pieces from ".
          "filename: $file\n";

    my $c      = 0;

    for ( @pieces ) {
        print "element ", ++$c, ": $_\n";
    }
    print "-----------\n";
[download]

In case your memory has failed you.

U28geW91IGNhbiBhbGwgcm90MTMgY
W5kIHBhY2soKS4gQnV0IGRvIHlvdS
ByZWNvZ25pc2UgQmFzZTY0IHdoZW4
geW91IHNlZSBpdD8gIC0tIEp1ZXJk