Trying to put an array into a scalar doesn't make much sense. It was deemed that when you attempt to evaluate an array as a scalar, you get its length.

Other issues:

• $file is a global variable. Use my!
• @tokens is a global variable. Use my!
• DATA is a global variable. Use my!
• You're hiding errors (including the previous three) by not using use strict; use warnings;.
• Since DATA is a global variable and you never explicitly close the file handle, the file handle is left open much longer than it needs to be.
• DATA is the name of special file handle. Let's not use that.
• What is a sub that reads a file doing printing?
• Modules are given the .pm extension.
• Why are you interpolating $file into a string (i.e. "$file") instead of just passing $file to open?
• Using open's 3-arg open is safer and less problematic.
• There's no reason to include the line number of the error in IO error message.

# Packagetest.pm

package Packagetest;

sub ReadFile
{
    my ($fn) = @_;
    open(my $fh, '<', $fn)
        or die("Can't open file \"$fn\": $!\n");

    my @recs;
    while (<$fh>) {
        chomp;
        my @tokens = split /\|/;
        push @recs, \@tokens;
    }

    return \@recs;
}

1;
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;

use Packagetest;

my $recs = Packagetest::ReadFile("datafile");
for my $rec (@$recs) {
    print "Wrestlername:  $recs->[0]\n";
    print "Crowdreaction: $recs->[1]\n";
    print "Specialmove:   $recs->[2]\n";
    print "\n";
}
[download]

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