dws nailed it (as usual).

As a side note, your comment:    # Create Associative Arrays does not correspond to what you have in the code. It seems clear from what you are doing that @alpha and @number are both just arrays and not associative arrays (i.e. hashes).

An array is a simple series of values (which is what you have) which retain their order and are accessed by an index value.

An associative array or hash is a group of pairs of values which are not guaranteed to be in any particular order; the first value in each pair is used as a key to the other which is used as the value associated with that key.

The comment line is not essential to the function of your code but this seemed worth mentioning so that you get used to the correct use of the terminology.

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