In addition to what dkubb wrote, after you store your arrays as references in a hash, you can also retrieve your arrays by dereferencing.(Better read up on references, because they may get confusing sometimes, even to an intermediate user).

If you retrieve the hash value, you get the referenced array. To get the array, you have to dereference it. i.e. 
$station1_arrayref = $station_data{1};
@station1_array = @$station1_arrayref;

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or just use
@station1_array = @{$station_data{1}};
for example, to retrieve all elements of station5:
foreach my $element (@{$station_data{5}}) {
    print $element. "\n";
}

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In your case, you are using sequential numbers as the keys in the hash. Depending on your situation, you could even just store the arrays within a big array:
@station_data = (\@station1,\@station2,\@station3);
and then retrieve the arrays in a similar manner (but remember that the index number of station1 is 0).

@station1_array = @{$station_data[0]};

This is one of those topics that I'm sure the PerlMonks users can give you tons of tips and shortcuts....

(Modified to eliminate the duplicate info provided by dkubb, since we apparently posted at the same time...)

In reply to Re: %Hashing Arrays by fpi
in thread %Hashing Arrays by Pearte

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