perldoc length states:

Returns the length in characters of the value of EXPR. If EXPR is omitted, returns length of $_. Note that this cannot be used on an entire array or hash to find out how many elements these have. For that, use scalar @array and scalar keys %hash respectively.

So when you are doing

$restLength = length(@rest);
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I think you mean (the scalar function being optional in this case):

$restLength = scalar @rest;
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On another note there is not need to go through all the contortion of making your loop c-like. Something like:

for my $item (@rest) {
  print "$item":
}
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will work just as well, and relieve you of worrying about iterators.

update: I neglected to mention that your split is working fine, but that it was the length bit that was causing what you were observing.

-enlil