<@a> is glob not readline ... neither of which you want to iterate over an array 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump qw/ dd /;
my $colons = "A B:C D";
my @notColons =split(/:/, $colons);
dd( $colons, \@notColons );
__END__
("A B:C D", ["A B", "C D"])

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In reply to Re^2: split always splits also on white space (Perl v5.14.2) Ubuntu (12.04) by Anonymous Monk
in thread split(/:/, $t) splits also on white space by Nagarjuna

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