Assuming you want the same result as chomp( my @array = <FILE> );,

chomp( my @array = $file =~ /\G(.*\n|.+)/g );
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or

my @array = $file =~ /\G(?=.)([^\n]*)\n?/sg;
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or

my @array = $file =~ /\G(.*)(?:\n|(?<=.))/g;
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or (This one allows you to easily use PerlIO layers)

open my $fh, '<', \$file;
chomp( my @array = <$fh> );
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If you want a reference to that array, use \:

my $array = \@array;
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Update: Added variants.