That will get the data off the end of @array2, not the beginning.

Err... Isn't that what the OP wanted? It works fine for me with the OP's data. OK, it destroys @array2, as Abigail-II pointed out. Just for fun, here's a solution that destroys both of the original arrays:

die "Arrays of different lengths" unless @array1 == @array2;
my @array3 = map { shift ( @array1 ) . pop ( @array2 ) } @array1;
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dave