I think you are also confused about Perl array and anonymous array syntax. The statement
    my @array = ('a', 'b', 'c');
constructs a list which is then used to initialize an array. The statement
    my $array_ref = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
constructs an anonymous array and returns a scalar reference to the array that is then used to initialize a scalar. See discussions of the  [ ] anonymous array constructor in perlref and perlreftut.

Consider the following examples:

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my \@arr =
   [
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   ];
 dump @arr;
"
syntax error at -e line 1, near "my \"
Global symbol "@arr" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.
Global symbol "@arr" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my @arr;
 \@arr =
   [
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   ];
 dump @arr;
"
Can't modify reference constructor in scalar assignment ... near "];"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my @arr =
   [
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   ];
 dump @arr;
 print scalar @arr;
"
[1, 2, 3, ["anna", "beth", "christie", "denise"]]

1

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my @arr =
   (
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   );
 dump @arr;
 print scalar @arr;
"
(1, 2, 3, ["anna", "beth", "christie", "denise"])

4
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The third example initializes an array with a single element (as shown by the
    print scalar @arr;
statement), a scalar that is a reference to an anonymously constructed array.

The fourth example initializes an array with four elements (one of which happens to be a reference to yet another anonymous array).