If you want to extract integers from a string, one way is to use regular expressions (perlre): 
use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my $str = '"[1,2]"';
my @nums = $str =~ /(\d+)/g;
print Dumper(\@nums);

__END__

$VAR1 = [
          '1',
          '2'
        ];

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See also:

In reply to Re: string to array by toolic
in thread string to array by Anonymous Monk

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