Be aware that a whole array assignment (@ary = ...) actually drops the existing elements and then fills the array with new ones. This will lead you into problems if you keep scalar references to array elements. The references will no longer point to the elements in the array.

In order to remove elements while preserving the integrity of references, you need to splice them out:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $term = 'foo';
my @ary = qw/one foo another foo too many foos/;

# print elements and addresses before
print "$_->[0] => $_->[1]\n"
    for map {[$_ => \$_]} @ary;

for (my $i = 0 ; $i < @ary ; $i++) {
    splice @ary, $i, 1 and @ary - $i and redo
        if $ary[$i] eq $term;
}

# print elements and addresses after
print "\n";
print "$_->[0] => $_->[1]\n"
    for map {[$_ => \$_]} @ary;
[download]

With example output:

one => SCALAR(0x80f57ac)
foo => SCALAR(0x80f58a8)
another => SCALAR(0x80f56bc)
foo => SCALAR(0x80fc944)
too => SCALAR(0x80ff6c4)
many => SCALAR(0x80ff6d0)
foos => SCALAR(0x80ff6dc)

one => SCALAR(0x80f57ac)
another => SCALAR(0x80f56bc)
too => SCALAR(0x80ff6c4)
many => SCALAR(0x80ff6d0)
foos => SCALAR(0x80ff6dc)
[download]