I didn't realize how bad your code was when I wrote my earlier reply. I'm not trying to rude. I think you'll agree with me after you see what follows.

Your bad and buggy way of building an array:

sub to_literal { "'$_[0]'" }

my $x;
for (...) {
    if (!$x) {
        $x = to_literal($_);
    } else {
        $x = join(', ', to_literal($_));
    }
}
my @a = eval $x;
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Still bad, but bugs removed:

sub to_literal { "'\Q$_[0]\E'" }     <---

my $x;
for (...) {
    if (!defined($x)) {              <---
        $x = to_literal($_);
    } else {
        $x = join(', ', to_literal($_));
    }
}
my @a = eval $x;
[download]

A good way of building an array:

my @a;
for (...) {
    push @a, $_;
}
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Bonus: It doesn't stringify everything.

Useful functions: push, pop, shift, unshift, splice

Update: I initially had the loops flattened, but I thought that would cause confusion.
Update: Added links.