What you want to do seems unusual to me: in my experience, one normally reads a file into a string or an array. Most problems can be fully solved with either a string representation or an array one -- which representation is more appropriate depends on the problem. Also, it is easy to slurp the whole file into a string, then convert into an array of lines; for example:

open(my $fh, '<', 'input') or die "open input: $!";
# Slurp file contents into a string.
my $contents = do { local $/; <$fh> };
# Convert into an array.
my @lines = split /^/, $contents;
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Can you describe what you are trying to achieve? Then we might be able to suggest solutions using either a string or an array (rather than both).