UPDATE: OMG, I got along the wrong track because of your original code which appeared to have several nested loops. The right Perl thing to "exit a single loop" is: last. You need a Label to jump a couple of levels up! But not here! Sorry about the confusion!

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;


my @x =
    (
    ['aaaaa', 'bbbbb', 'ccccc', 'ddddd',],
    ['eeeee', 'fffff', 'ggggg', 'hhhhh',],
    ['iiiii', 'jjjjj', 'kkkkk', 'lllll',],
    );
    
#@x is a 2D array, an AoA (Array of Array)

OUTER: for my $row_ref (@x)
{
    for my $element (@$row_ref)
    {
       # call exit(1) to competely stop!
       # with error code 1
       if ($element eq 'ggggg')
       {
          print "stop seen\n";
          next OUTER;  #last; would work here
       }
       else
       {
          print "$element\n";
       }
    }
}

__END__
Prints:
aaaaa
bbbbb
ccccc
ddddd
eeeee
fffff
stop seen
iiiii
jjjjj
kkkkk
lllll
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