If you're reading from a file, you can also read a single line at-a-time (instead of reading it _all_ and then splitting on the newlines), as in:

open(FH, $filename) or die qq(Could not open file "$filename" for read
+ing.\n);
while(<FH>) {
    # my $line = $_;
    # my @arr = split(\t/, $line);

    # -or-
    my @arr = split(/\t/); # split defaults to $_

    # process @arr values for a single line
    # ...
}
close FH;
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Where do you want *them* to go today?