I want an option in references where I can print out either one line or an element of the line using the -> notation.

Perl doesn't have the facility to index into strings by word. Or by char.

You will either have to store each line as a string, and then split it when you want to access individual words:

@AofLines = ( 'this is line one', 'this is line two' );;

pp \@AofLines;;

[
    "this is line one", 
    "this is line two"
]

print $AofLines[ 0 ];;
this is line one

print +( split ' ', $AofLines[ 1 ] )[ 3 ];;
two
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Or you store each line as an array of words, and the you will need to join them together to get the line back:

@AofAofWords = ( [ qw[this is line one] ], [ qw[this is line two] ] );
+;

pp \@AofAofWords;;
[
    ["this", "is", "line", "one"], 
    ["this", "is", "line", "two"]
]

print $AofAofWords[ 0 ][ 3 ];;
one

print join ' ', @{ $AofAofWords[ 1 ] };;
this is line two
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Which is better for your application will depend upon whether you need to access the words or lines most frequently.