I cannot reproduce your problem. Using the following code:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Tie::File;

my @array;

tie @array, 'Tie::File', 'junk.dat', memory => 0, recsep => "\t";

print shift @array while @array;
[download]

and data (and several variations of it)

1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10
[download]

Tie::File does exactly as expected.

Your sample snippet doesn't compile (with strict) anyway. The Tie::File should be in quotes and you have completely omitted the name fo the file. I suspect that if you added use strict, you might find the source of your problems.

However, they could be just a transcription errors, so I'd suggest you produce a cut down version of your program (with strict), just enough to demonstrate the problem, and post that.