You didn't explain what the problem was, and you didn't explain why your "solution" worked.
$a is a
special variable, using it for anything else than to
sort is dangerous and confusing. The last supported Perl version is 5.26. If your hobby or job is to support older versions, I'm fine with that, but please try not to hijack a thread to propagate the 16 years old version.
($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord
}map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,