I have several arrays of the same length where each indexed element is related i.e. $array_a[0] is linked to $array_b[0] etc. and the same for all other elements / arrays.

Then evidence suggests that the data contained in those array could be better organized in a more complex structure reflecting their internal logical relationships, e.g. a so called AoA or an AoH. For example you may have

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @array=([2, 'fred'],
           [1, 'bob'],
           [4, 'john'],
           [3, 'peter']);

print Dumper [ sort {$a->[0] <=> $b->[0]} @array ];

__END__
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=>

$VAR1 = [
          [
            1,
            'bob'
          ],
          [
            2,
            'fred'
          ],
          [
            3,
            'peter'
          ],
          [
            4,
            'john'
          ]
        ];
[download]