I get the funny feeling your 'first column' is just a string like this "(a, b, c, d)" (but I might be wrong, as I am new at this) If that is the case, removing the parentheses and then splitting on the comma will fix your issue:

my $set = $res[0];
#I use a lot of 'extra' variables to tell me what everything is

$set =~ s/[\(\)]//g;
#remove all parentheses

my @values = split(',', $set);
#now every value should have its own spot in the array
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I hope this solves your problem.

Please ignore me if this is a stupid answer...