You could use recursion to simplify that a bit:

sub unwrap_cdata {
    my @array;
    for ( @_ ) {
        if ( ref ) {
            push @array,
                ref eq 'ARRAY'  ? [ unwrap_cdata( @$_ ) ] :
                ref eq 'HASH'   ? { unwrap_cdata( %$_ ) } :
                ref eq 'SCALAR' ?  \unwrap_cdata( $$_ ) :
                ();
                }
        else {
            ( my $var = $_ ) =~ s/<!\[CDATA\[//;
            $var =~ s/&lt;!\[CDATA\[//;
            $var =~ s/]]>//;
            $var =~ s/]]&gt;//;
            push @array, $var;
            }
        }
    return wantarray ? @array : $array[ 0 ];
    }
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