#! perl -slw use strict; sub checkRow { my $ref = shift; $_ and return 1 for @$ref; return; } sub firstAllZeroRow { my $ref = shift; checkRow( $ref->[ $_ ] ) // return $_ for 0 .. $#$ref; return; } my @array = ( [ qw/ 1 1 1 1 1 / ], [ qw/ 0 1 1 0 0 / ], [ qw/ 0 0 0 0 1 / ], [ qw/ 0 0 0 0 0 / ], [ qw/ 0 1 0 1 0 / ], ); print firstAllZeroRow( \@array ); __END__ C:\test>junk50 3