$ perl -e' use Data::Dumper; my $A = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]; print Dumper $A; @$A = map { [ splice @$_, 0, 2 ], $_ } @$A; print Dumper $A; ' $VAR1 = [ [ 1, 2, 3 ], [ 4, 5, 6 ] ]; $VAR1 = [ [ 1, 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4, 5 ], [ 6 ] ];