You can't really have nested arrays the way you seem to think about them in Perl. An array is just a collection of ordered scalars. So, if you try to do something like this:

you will not get an array of arrays, but just a flat array containing all the values listed above, just as if you had declared it this way:

But you can nonetheless build nested data structure by the use of references: some of the scalars of your array might be references to other arrays.

For example you could do this:

my @subarray1 = (5, 9, 4);
my @subarray2 = (8, 7);
my @master_array = (1, 3, \@subarray1, 2, \@subarray2, 6);
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Here, $master_array[2] contains \@subarray1, which is a scalar containing a reference to the @subarray1 array. You could now access the 9 value with the following syntax:

To change 9 to 10, just use it the other way around:

You can also use the [] array reference constructor to obtain the same result:

my $subarray1_ref = [5, 9, 4];
my @master_array = (1, 3, $subarray1_ref, 2, [8, 7], 6);
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This gives you a first idea about what you can do, but you definitely need to read the documentation about Perl references and data structure to go further. The place to start is the Perl Data Structure Cookbook: http://perldoc.perl.org/perldsc.html.

Hi viored, and welocome to the monestary!

The following should give you a good start: perldsc perlref

Not knowing more about what you are doing, for your sub call, I might do something like:

subcall( \@{$M[0]} );
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subcall( \@{$M[0]} );

Which passes a reference to the first array in @M.

So it does, but if the array  @M is initialized per something like
    my @M = (\@a1, \@a2, \@a3);
then the elements of  @M are all array references to begin with, so why not just
    subcall($M[0]);
and avoid taking a reference to a de-referenced array reference?

(And see also perllol "Manipulating Arrays of Arrays in Perl".) (Update: And also perlreftut.)

When I use

subcall( $M[0] );
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I get ARRAY(0xa07b5d8), not a the output of the function I'm interested in. Same thing for

subcall( \@{M[0]} )
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What am I missing?

Ah, but if I use

subcall ( @{\@{$M[0]}} )
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It works. Thank you so much, both of of you.

So you want to have a bunch of strings

So you want to stuff those strings under one thing, one bucket, one box, one variable

So you want to have an array-of-strings

So you have more than one array-of-strings

So keeping more than one array-of-strings in an array, seems natural

Unlesss, you want to name each and every one of those arrays of bunches of things, then keep them in a hash

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict;
use warnings;
my @feet = qw/ left right /;
my @shoes = qw/ loafer sneaker boot /;
my @lowers = ( \@feet, \@shoes );

## $lower{feet} is prounounced lower-of-feet
## $lower{shoes} is prounounced lower-of-shoes

my %lower = ( feet => [ @feet ], shoes => [ @shoes ] );
print "$lower{feet}[0] $lower{shoes}[0]\n";
print "$lower{feet}[1] $lower{shoes}[1]\n";
print "----\n";

for my $lower ( @lowers ){
   for my $low ( @$lower ){
      print " $low ";
   }
   print "\n";
}

print "----\n";
## while( my( $key, $value ) = each %lower ){
while( my( $lower, $of_array ) = each %lower ){
    print "$lower $_\n" for @$of_array;
}
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foreach, each, Tutorials: Data Type: Array, references quick reference

More elaborate and coprehensive tutorial in http://learn.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/, Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes, perlintro, chromatics free book Modern Perl a loose description of how experienced and effective Perl 5 programmers work....You can learn this too.

Anonymous Monk has proposed a hash of arrays data structure, which enables you to name the sub_arrays. This is fine if you need to names these arrays. If you don't particularly need to name them, then the array of arrays structure that I outline above is just as fine for what you want to do. You could have something like this:

my @array = ([$str_1_1, $str_1-2], [$str_2_1, $str_2_2]);

It is then easy to process the strings of any subarray.

Update 08:35 UTC: added the following examples under the Perl debugger:

  DB<1> @array = (["str_1_1", "str_1-2"], ["str_2_1", "str_2_2"])
  DB<2>
  DB<2> x @array
0  ARRAY(0x253a70)
   0  'str_1_1'
   1  'str_1-2'
1  ARRAY(0x58f8a8)
   0  'str_2_1'
   1  'str_2_2'
  DB<3> x $array[1]
0  ARRAY(0x58f8a8)
   0  'str_2_1'
   1  'str_2_2'
  DB<4>  p "$array[1][$_] \n" for 0..1
str_2_1
str_2_2
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