extract-lines

use strict;
use warnings;
my $fn = 'file.txt';
open ( my $fh, '<', $fn ) or die "Could not open file '$fn': $!";
my @array;
while( ! (eof $fh) ) {
    my $line1 = <$fh>;
    my $line2 = <$fh>;
    if ( defined $line2 ) {
        chomp $line2;
        $line2 =~ s/^>//;  # Remove leading ">" character
        push @array, $line2;
    }
}
close $fh;