I'm not sure without <code> tags, but I think what you're trying to do is this:

for $i (0..$#{$ref})
{
    print $ref->[$i]->[0];
}
[download]

That prints the first element of each array in the arrayref.

There are several ways to go about putting the elements into a new array. Here's what I'd do:

my @newarray = map { $_->[0] } @$ref;
[download]

-Matt