While @array is suitable in many cases, you should be mindful of the possibility of sparsely populated arrays. Consider the following and what numbers might be considered to be "the number of elements in the array".

use strict;
use warnings;
use Devel::Peek;

my @array;

$array[5] = 'data';

print "\@array = " . scalar(@array) . "\n";

Dump(\@array, 10);

__END__

@array = 6
SV = RV(0x913534c) at 0x9135340
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (TEMP,ROK)
  RV = 0x9145430
  SV = PVAV(0x9136250) at 0x9145430
    REFCNT = 2
    FLAGS = (PADMY)
    ARRAY = 0x91522e0
    FILL = 5
    MAX = 5
    ARYLEN = 0x0
    FLAGS = (REAL)
    Elt No. 0
    Elt No. 1
    Elt No. 2
    Elt No. 3
    Elt No. 4
    Elt No. 5
    SV = PV(0x9133048) at 0x91351f0
      REFCNT = 1
      FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
      PV = 0x9140928 "data"\0
      CUR = 4
      LEN = 8
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