After all of the talk about final newlines, and a problem just hit me in the head. I did not take into consideration blank lines in files. What if a file has a blank line or two in the middle? If there is a blank line it currently, the before and after still get put on the list without any other value.

red
orange
yellow
spring
green
teal
cyan
azure

blue
violet
magenta
pink
white
black
gray
[download]

perl -E '
use lib "mods/lib";
use Fancy::Open qw(fancy_open);
my @array=fancy_open("test.txt", { before => "solid ", after => " bead
+" });
say $_ for @array;
'
[download]

solid red bead
solid orange bead
solid yellow bead
solid spring bead
solid green bead
solid teal bead
solid cyan bead
solid azure bead
solid  bead
solid blue bead
solid violet bead
solid magenta bead
solid pink bead
solid white bead
solid black bead
solid gray bead
[download]

So, I am now three steps back from being ready to package this module. *sighs*