You've gotten plenty of good replies. Here's a tip. Try using Data::Dumper to inspect your data structure if you get confused about what's going on.

Just

use Data::Dumper;
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and then pass your data structure to it:

print Dumper( \@my_complicated_array );
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and you'll get a nicely formatted view of your data structure on screen or wherever STDOUT is pointing. One caveat: if your structure is too large it can take a long time to dump. Regards, Cat