If you are specifically interested in matrices have a look at Math::MatrixReal and in particular the assign() method. This will also take care of the pretty-printing.

This is a neat module. From the pod (but not directly related to the question):

              $matrix = Math::MatrixReal->new_from_string(<<'MATRIX');
              [  1  0  0  0  0  0  1  ]
              [  0  1  0  0  0  0  0  ]
              [  0  0  1  0  0  0  0  ]
              [  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  ]
              [  0  0  0  0  1  0  0  ]
              [  0  0  0  0  0  1  0  ]
              [  1  0  0  0  0  0 -1  ]
              MATRIX
[download]

If on the other hand you just want to deal with a 2-D array of data have a look a perllol.

--
John.