The use of the 'eq' operator, or the '=~', will force the lvalue into scalar context. Your array, as a scalar, is interpretted to be the length of the array at the time of reference. You are comparing "1" to ".".

You likely intend one of the following:

or,

Note, in the latter case, that the array is being interpolated within a string. This code is equivalent to:

For simplicitly, I would choose to use a temporary variable:

my $cell = $Circ->[$i][$j];
... @$cell == 0 && $cell->[0] eq '.' ...
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Cheers,
mark