#!/your/perl/here use strict; use warnings; # backwhack whitespace my @data = ( [ [1, 'Darth\ Vader'], [3, 'Luke\ Skywalker'], [5, 'Obi\ Wan\ Kenobi'], ],[ # note stray trailing blank here [0, 'Lighsabre\ '], [5, 'Blaster'], [9, 'Rocket\ launcher'], ],[ [10, 'Dagobah'], [14, 'Kashyyyk'], ], ); # transpose innermost 2D matrices my @new_data; foreach my $set ( 0..$#data ) { foreach my $pairs ( 0..$#{$data[$set]} ) { foreach my $items ( 0..$#{$data[$set][$pairs]} ) { $new_data[$set][$items][$pairs] = $data[$set][$pairs][$items]; } } } # comma-separated pattern specs for glob $"=','; # had to break this in two because of tab and newline issues my $glob1 = "{@{$new_data[0][0]}}{@{$new_data[1][0]}}{@{$new_data[2][0]}}"; my $glob2 = "{@{$new_data[0][1]}}" . '\,\ ' . "{@{$new_data[1][1]}}" . '\,\ ' . "{@{$new_data[2][1]}}"; my @glob1 = glob $glob1; my @glob2 = glob $glob2; print map {"$glob1[$_]\t$glob2[$_]\n"} 0..$#glob1;