Of course, I can always avoid this problem by doing something like this:

    $sub_p_tmp[$i] =~ s/[()]//;
    if ( $sub_p_tmp[$i] =~ m/^(.*)\,(.*)\,(.*)[,;]$/ )
    { @args = ($1, $2, $3); }
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But I feel like that's cheating. I want to know why the the original way doesn't work!! :)