Not as short as I was expecting, but definitely will find a place for it in my Perl backpack.

I wouldn't have a separate array for printing, since I can manipulate the original one for my output:

my @array = map {my $row = $_; map { $_.$row } ('a'..'h') } (1..8);

print map {
    my $o =$_; 
    $o =~ tr/123456788/87654321/; 
    $o =~ /^h/ ? $o." \n" : $o." " 
    } @array;

__END__
a8 b8 c8 d8 e8 f8 g8 h8
a7 b7 c7 d7 e7 f7 g7 h7
a6 b6 c6 d6 e6 f6 g6 h6
a5 b5 c5 d5 e5 f5 g5 h5
a4 b4 c4 d4 e4 f4 g4 h4
a3 b3 c3 d3 e3 f3 g3 h3
a2 b2 c2 d2 e2 f2 g2 h2
a1 b1 c1 d1 e1 f1 g1 h1
[download]

This was a nice brainstorming. Thanks.

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