Yeah, so a reference is being assigned to @AoA2, which is why it's changing @AoA1 when edited. I still don't know how to dereference the value in @AoA1 before assigning it to @AoA2 (it's a scalar). When I tried ${$AoA1[0][1]} it said: "Can't use string ("1") as a SCALAR ref while "strict refs" in use." String ("1") is the scalar value at @AoA1[0][1]).