>perl -wMstrict -le "my @guys = qw/boy boymonkey boydog/; my @gals = qw/girl girlmonkey girldog/; ;; my @unions; for my $guy (@guys) { push @unions, [ $guy, shift @gals ]; } ;; use Data::Dumper; print Dumper \@unions; " $VAR1 = [ [ 'boy', 'girl' ], [ 'boymonkey', 'girlmonkey' ], [ 'boydog', 'girldog' ] ];