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:

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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