You could use natatime from List::MoreUtils

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use List::MoreUtils qw/ natatime /;

my @list = qw(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12);

my @AoA;

my $it = natatime 4, @list;

while (my @vals = $it->()) {
    push @AoA, \@vals;    
}

print "@list\n";
use Data::Dumper;print Dumper \@AoA;
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This would leave the original array unchanged.

Output:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
$VAR1 = [
          [
            '1',
            '2',
            '3',
            '4'
          ],
          [
            '5',
            '6',
            '7',
            '8'
          ],
          [
            '9',
            '10',
            '11',
            '12'
          ]
        ];
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