use Data::Dumper; my @multi; foreach my $i ( 10 .. 12 ) { foreach my $j ( 10 .. 12 ) { $multi[$i-10][$j-10] = "$i,$j"; } } my $what_is_this = $multi[1]; print Dumper $what_is_this; __END__ $VAR1 = [ '11,10', '11,11', '11,12' ]; #### my $n = scalar @{ $multi[1] };