Every element of an array is a named scalar variable.

Eg. $array[3] = 'something';  $var = $array[4]; etc.

You can therefore use them directly with split.

Eg.

for my $element (@array) {
   my @bits = split "\t", $element;
   #do something with the bits.
}
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The contents of @array will remain unmodified for further use later unless you assign something to $element.

It might be clearer to you written this way.

for my $index (0 .. $#array) { # $#array is the numer of the highest e
+lement.
   my @bits = split "\t", $array[$index];
}
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The first version is usually considered better though.