Is there some reason for not putting the "grouping" code in a subroutine?

My personal bias would be to scope the array over a pair of subroutines that playe with it

    ...
    if ( @sub_list > 1 )
      {
        # maybe lots of code here to build the record,
        # using all those attributes... 
        add_record(# some record );
      }
    ...
    if ( @sub_list > 1 )
      {
        # maybe lots of code here to build the record,
        # using all those attributes... 
        add_record(# some record );
      }
    ....

{
    # Private scope for various things
    my @complete_list = ();

sub add_record
  {
    my($record) = @_;
    ...
    push @complete_list, $record;
  }

sub find_record
  {
    my($index) = @_;
    # Do some checking for validity
    return $complete_list[$index];
  }

# End the private scope
}
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