The code snippet is the original translation of the AWK script.

That probably explains where this line came from:

$[ = 1;                 # set array base to 1
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If you have a lot of other stuff to add to your perl script, you almost certainly want to make sure to DELETE THAT LINE.

(If you have already written the additional code, and have made all the adjustments needed to accommodate the non-standard value for $[, that's unfortunate. Still, you should consider deleting that line anyway, and adjusting everything back to "normal".)

I had never seen or used "a2p" before (I never did a lot of awk scripting). Now that I've seen what it does If the OP code is really an example of what it does, I think I'll avoid it.