Does Perl 5.8.8 allow you to explicitly assign values to numbered variables such as $1? Because with Perl 5.14.2, with this snippet:

perl -E '$1 = 100; say $1;'
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I get this message:

Modification of a read-only value attempted at...
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Perl imposes no artificial limits on how many elements a string may be split into with the split function, nor does Perl care how many variables you assign to. So I think for us to determine what is going wrong you would need to show us a small snippet of the actual code that is failing.

Though Perl imposes no limits on how many variables you can assign to, common sense and good style may dictate that assigning to thirty six variables that are numbered might be a construct better handled with an array.

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