Initialize an array with parens (or not at all), *not* with square brackets.

perl -MData::Dumper -wle 'my @official = []; print Dumper \@official;'
    $VAR1 = [
              []
            ];

perl -MData::Dumper -wle 'my @official = (); print Dumper \@official;'
    $VAR1 = [];
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Also, declare @official outside the while loop. Otherwise, you are re-initializing it on each loop.