First of all, you example does not work. Precisely for the reason you give: the @ in this case is interpreted as a list¹ variable introducer. Use single quotes if you do not want variables to be interpolated in a string:

$x = 'jdoe@somewhere.com,bdoakes@nowhere.com';
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@addresses = split /,/, $x;
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I'm still making rookie mistakes, does it ever end? Thank you.

I'm still making rookie mistakes, does it ever end? Thank you.

Yes :) just practice more and draw big circles when you encounter a rookie mistake, in no-time-flat you'll stop making them :)

Common Perl Pitfalls / perltrap

Tutorials: Basic debugging checklist , brian's Guide to Solving Any Perl Problem

perlintro, http://learn.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/, http://perl-tutorial.org/, Tutorials: Basic debugging checklist , brian's Guide to Solving Any Perl Problem, Modern Perl book, a loose description of how experienced and effective Perl 5 programmers work....You can learn this too.

The Perl Monks Guide to the Monastery

I say that you know a programming language decently when you are able to write a non-trivial block of code and not have any syntax errors in it. More points if it works correctly on the first try, too :-)

Consider using Email::Address:

use Modern::Perl;
use Email::Address;

my $x         = 'jdoe@somewhere.com,bdoakes@nowhere.com';
my @addresses = Email::Address->parse($x);

say for @addresses;
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Output:

jdoe@somewhere.com
bdoakes@nowhere.com
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Update: Didn't notice that Anonymous Monk already covered this. I really do need more coffee...

To split this string into two seperate email values stored in an array, you can use the split() function which takes two arguemnts. The delimiter on which to seperate the original string ( in your case it looks like your using a comma ) and the string itself. To turn @ into a literal, use single quotes for $x or excape them with \@:

my $x = 'jdoe@somewhere.com,bdoakes@nowhere.com';
my @list = split(/,/,$x); # /,/ specifies the delimiter
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#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Dump 'pp';
use Email::Address;
my $line = 'asdf@example.com,qwerty@example.com,bananas@example.com';
my @addresses = Email::Address->parse($line);
pp $line, \@addresses;
$_ .= "" for @addresses; # stringify
pp $line, \@addresses;
__END__
do {
  my $b = [
    bless([
      undef,
      "asdf\@example.com",
      "",
      "asdf\@example.com",
      [
        \"asdf\@example.com,qwerty\@example.com,bananas\@example.com",
        0,
      ],
    ], "Email::Address"),
    bless([
      undef,
      "qwerty\@example.com",
      "",
      "qwerty\@example.com",
      ['fix', 1],
    ], "Email::Address"),
    bless([
      undef,
      "bananas\@example.com",
      "",
      "bananas\@example.com",
      ['fix', 2],
    ], "Email::Address"),
  ];
  $b->[1][4][0] = \${$b->[0][4][0]};
  $b->[2][4][0] = \${$b->[0][4][0]};
  (
    "asdf\@example.com,qwerty\@example.com,bananas\@example.com",
    $b,
  );
}
(
  "asdf\@example.com,qwerty\@example.com,bananas\@example.com",
  [
    "asdf\@example.com",
    "qwerty\@example.com",
    "bananas\@example.com",
  ],
)
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