Further to Cristoforo's reply above:     Ppeoc: Indeed, the  @shapes array (from the OP) is an array, and an array slice works on any array:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @shapes = (
   [qw/circle square triangle polygon/],
   [qw/red green blue yellow fuschia/],
   [qw/a b c d e f g h i j k/] ,
   [qw/Movie TV Radio/] ,
   );
 ;;
 for my $arrayref (@shapes[ 2, 0, 2 ]) {
   printf qq{'$_' } for @{$arrayref}[ 2 .. $#$arrayref ];
   print '';
   }
"
'c' 'd' 'e' 'f' 'g' 'h' 'i' 'j' 'k'
'triangle' 'polygon'
'c' 'd' 'e' 'f' 'g' 'h' 'i' 'j' 'k'
[download]

Furthermore, the slice list does not have to be a range, but is a list of any indices, including repeats, in any order.

If you want to create an entirely new array as 2teez is doing with map below, you can do something like this:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"my @shapes = (
   [qw/circle square triangle polygon/],
   [qw/red green blue yellow fuschia/],
   [qw/a b c d e f g h i j k/] ,
   [qw/Movie TV Radio/] ,
   );
 ;;
 my @new_ra =
   map { [ @{$_}[ 2 .. $#$_ ] ] }
   @shapes[ 2, 0, 2 ]
   ;
 dd \@new_ra;
"
[["c" .. "k"], ["triangle", "polygon"], ["c" .. "k"]]
[download]

Update: Array and hash slices are a very convenient notational shortcut, but it's possible to avoid them if you wish. Try to understand the slice examples given and try to work out on your own a variation that does not use slices. If you need help with this, please post again in this thread.

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