It depends. Are there any other requirements that you are going to dribble out?

I would not use the approach I gave if I wanted to save what was removed. I would probably use splice instead. Additional requirements may change that answer.

Your questions are a little vague, but maybe this will help:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @array = ('a' .. 'e');
print 'Original @array contents: ', join(', ', @array),  "\n";
my @popped;

unshift @popped, pop @array for 1 .. 3;

print '@array now contains:      ', join(', ', @array),  "\n";
print 'The deleted elements:     ', join(', ', @popped), "\n";
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Output:

Original @array contents: a, b, c, d, e
@array now contains:      a, b
The deleted elements:     c, d, e
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See also Data: Arrays.

or more clearly, concisely and efficiently:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @array = ('a' .. 'e');
print 'Original @array contents: ', join(', ', @array),  "\n";
my @popped = splice @array, 0, 3;

print '@array now contains:      ', join(', ', @array),  "\n";
print 'The deleted elements:     ', join(', ', @popped), "\n";
[download]

splice is your friend.

True laziness is hard work