sub seperate_data {
[download]

  push(@{$arrays}, [split(/ /,$data[$a])]);
}
[download]

Update: How could I miss the brackets? Thanks gjb for showing it.

Update 2 (see below):$array->[0][0] being the first element of your first array and $array->[1][0] being the first element of your second array...

Close, but no cookie ;-) I think you want something like this:

sub seperate_data {
  push(@{$arrays}, [split(/ /,$data[$a])]);
}
[download]

since otherwise you'll end up with a long list rather than a list of lists.

Hope this helps, -gjb-

When I attempt to: print "$arrays[0][0]"; I'm getting an error that I have an uninitialized value in that line. Any suggestions? Llamo_rin

No cookie too ;-) because you missed my second mistake
.oO( I should never post untested code. At least I'm not Micro$chrott )
which is: $array->[0][0] will give the first element of the first array...

since you're accessing a global variable in a subroutine, @a will be appended to each time. you need to create a lexical variable, and return it from the subroutine. something like:

sub separate_data
{
  my( @important_data )= @_;
  my @important_results= split / /, @important_data;
  return @important_results;
}

## call it like
my @answer= separate_data( $data[$a] );

## or in a loop as:
for my $a ( 0..10 )
{
  my @answer= separate_data( $data[$a] );
}
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~Particle *accelerates*

This is a terribly dirty thing to do, combining symbolic references and global variables, but I'm lowdown enough to show you how:

{
    my $name = 'a';
    sub separate_data {
        @{$name++} = split / /, $_[0];
    }
}
[download]

You'll need to do that under no strict qw(vars refs); . Can you think of a better design for what you're doing? Hint: hash.

After Compline,
Zaxo

A twist on particle's solution. Instead of saving to an array, you pass in a referance to that array:

sub separate_data {
    my $array = shift;
    $array = [ split / /, $data[$a] ];
}

my (@array1, @array2, @array3);
seperate_data(\@array1);
seperate_data(\@array2);
seperate_data(\@array3);
[download]

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated