A hash of hashes will do the trick nicely and is infinitely extensible. Here I populate a game board that extends from x = -5 to x = +5 with the same range for y then pluck a value from one square (I store the co-ordinates there for simplicity). Probably the simplest, if not the most memory efficient way to do it.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

tachyon

# declare $grid to hold ref to anon hashes (thanks tye)
my $grid; 
for my $x(-5..5) {
    for my $y(-5..5) {
        $grid->{$x}{$y} = "co-ords x:$x, y:$y";
    }
}

print "Here is -2,3 : ", $grid->{-2}{3};
print "\nHere is 0,0 : ", $grid->{0}{0};
[download]

If you want to store a range of attributes for each square a super grid made of a hash of hashes will work.

Note this has been modified for efficiency based on tye's post:

my %grid1;

for my $x(-5..5) {
    for my $y(-5..5) {
        $grid1{$x,$y} = { name  => "$x,$y", 
                          power => int rand(10),
                          allow => "all" };
    }
}

print "\nHere is name 0,0 : ", $grid1{0,0}{'name'};
print "\nHere is power -2,3 : ", $grid1{-2,3}{'power'};
print "\nHere is allow 5,4 : ", $grid1{0,0}{'allow'};
[download]

A hash of hash of arrays is more space efficient but you must index the contents of each square numerically

my %grid2;

for my $x(-5..5) {
    for my $y(-5..5) {
        $grid2{$x,$y} = ["$x,$y",int rand(10),"all"];
    }
}

print "\nHere is name 0,0 : ", $grid2{0,0}[0];
print "\nHere is power -2,3 : ", $grid2{-2,3}[1];
print "\nHere is allow 5,4 : ", $grid2{0,0}[2];
[download]

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