#! perl -slw use strict; my @AoA = ( [ '1', '2', '11' ], [ '3', '3', '6' ], [ '6', '8', '11' ], [ '0', '7', '9' ], ); my @A = qw(0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 1 0 1 0); my( $p, $q ); OUTER: for my $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) { for my $j ( 0 .. $#{ $AoA[ $i ] } ) { ( $p, $q ) = ( $i, $j ) and last OUTER if $A[ $AoA[ $i ][ $j ] ]; } } print "i:$p j:$q";