Well, there's a couple of ways to do it: 
my($scalar, @restofarray) = @array;

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or, even simpler... 
my $scalar = shift(@array);

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and @array will contain the remainder.

disclaimer: ignoring differences between arrays and lists for the sake of simplicity

Remember rule one...

In reply to Re: head of list + rest of list by Forsaken
in thread head of list + rest of list by jjohhn

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