If you are just trying to slurp the contents of a file into an array, where each element of the array corresponds to one line of the file, then this is one way to do it:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use warnings;
use strict;

print read_file('foo.txt');
exit;

sub read_file {
    my $file = shift;
    open my $fh, '<', $file or die "Can not open file '$file' $!\n";
    my @all_lines = <$fh>;
    close $fh;
    return @all_lines;
}
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If file "foo.txt" contains these 3 lines:

apple
banana
orange
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then the script output will be:

apple
banana
orange
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You can then manipulate the array contents to suit your needs.