Please do feel free to post some specific questions as you get further into the project (or into the reading). We love helping to solve problems.

It's possible that you were steered away from a 2D array, in favor of some other Perl datastructure, such as a hash of arrays (which is also a 2d structure, but built using two types of simple datastructures instead of a single type).

It may be helpful to remember that in Perl, complex datastructures are easily built on-the-fly, and thus, can be made to any degree of complexity. The shape or topography of a Perl complex datastructure is limited only by need and imagination.