While declaring the array in the function, or before returning the result from the function, you can initialize the values if you want to:

# Before doing stuff with array
my @array = ('') x 8;
# do stuff with array

# or before returning from function
for (@array) { $_ = '' unless defined }
#or
#for (@array[0..7]) { $_ = '' unless defined }

return @array;
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