Even using @words the code in the OP will print the length of each array since the print statement is using the . operator to concatenate.

my @words = qw( this is the end );
print "words array is this long ".@words."\n";
print @words , "\n";

__END__
words array is this long 4
thisistheend

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In reply to Re^2: while loop returning numbers not strings by Lotus1
in thread while loop returning numbers not strings by jaffinito34

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