You should use grep.

my @allFruit = qw/apple apricot banana coconut/;
my @someFruit = grep {  m/^[ap]/ } @allFruit;
print "no. of some fruit: " . scalar(@someFruit) . "\n";
print "some fruit: " . join('*',@someFruit) . "\n";
__OUTPUT__
no. of some fruit: 2
some fruit: apple*apricot
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