stu, is this what you want? $array2[0][0] is 'oranges'.

my @array = qw(oranges bannanas apples kiwi);
my @array2 = ();
$array2[0] = \@array;
# ad nausium ...

print $array2[0][0];
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update forgot to address the other part of your question. "I am a little confused on how to read the vertices into the array when I don't know how many there are until I read the file." You are doing this by saying, while there is another line of data to be read, ...

while ($line1 = <FHV>) {
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