Well, that might help, except that there's one caveat. I'm passing this matrix to a C routine. Here's how it works, once I build the matrix @matrix as shown earlier:

anglecast (@matrix);
sub anglecast (\@) {
    my $avMatrix = shift (@_); 
    my $packedMatrix= "";
    my @recycleBin;
    my $width= @{$avMatrix->[0]};
    for my $avRow(@$avMatrix) {
 $width= @$avRow if @$avRow<$width;
 my $packedRow= pack("f$width", @$avRow);
 push @recycleBin, \$packedRow;
 $packedMatrix .= pack("P", $packedRow);
    }
    return CAST(0+@$avMatrix, $width, $packedMatrix);
 }

Anyone know how to modify this if I want to use references?  Or maybe 
+there's a more efficient way to load a matrix?  Thanks again, Evan
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