in reply to Storing first letter of each element of @p in $x

Get the first letter (perldoc -f substr),
for each element (perldoc -f map),
then make a string from these characters (perldoc -f join).

my $x = join'', map {substr $_, 0, 1} @p;

print "Just another Perl ${\(trickster and hacker)},"
The Sidhekin proves Sidhe did it!