# declare a subroutine
# takes two strings as arguments
sub load_array($$)
{
    # assign the two strings to two local variables, $a_ref and $file
    # so, if called as &load_array('foo','bar'), $a_ref eq 'foo' and
    # $file eq 'bar'.
    my ($a_ref, $file) = @_;

    # opens the file for read-only access
    # if the open fails, the program exits with the supplied message
    open (FILE, $file) or die "Can't open $file:$!\n";

    # the array pointed to by $a_ref is assigned the contents
    # of the file
    @{$a_ref} = <FILE>;

    # the file is closed
    close FILE;

    # newlines are removed from each element of the array
    chomp @{$a_ref};
}
[download]

Looks to me that this code is designed to be used like so:

my($ref) = \@array;
my($file) = '/usr/dict/words';
&load_array($ref,$file);
# $ref now contains a reference to an array which contains
# all the words in /usr/dict/words, with the newlines
# removed.
[download]

Cheers,
Shendal