I do not see your point about using an array here, since you are not really using an array but just one element of your array, so that a scalar value would just work the same way: 
my $scalar =   "abc\ndef\nghi\n";
print $1 . $3 if $scalar =~ /(.*)(\ndef)(.*)/s;

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In reply to Re^2: Regex match on implicit default variable ($_) in a script, not a one liner by Laurent_R
in thread Regex match on implicit default variable ($_) in a script, not a one liner by Todd Chester

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