You need [...] for creating array refs: 
my $aref = [ split(/\D+/,"1,2xx4:17") ];

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See perlreftut, perlref and References Quick Reference for details. (Update: I just noticed the latter is about dereferencing, not about creating anonymous data structures. Might be helpful nonetheless).

In reply to Re: split and assign to arrayref in one go? by moritz
in thread split and assign to arrayref in one go? by rovf

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