similar to my first thought which was:

 perl -le '@x=(9,8,4,3,6,5); print ((sort @x)[0])'
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BUT not what OP wanted .. he wants @array to contain N-1 values at the end.. Something like (though not the most efficent):

 perl -le '@x=(9,8,4,3,6,5); print join ":", ((sort @x)[1..$#x])'

# OP:
@array = sort @array;
shift @array;

#using above:
@array = ((sort @array)[1..$#array])
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