The for loop at the end was a bit of a puzzler because you didn't put your code between <code> </code> tags. See this node.

# original
for ($counter = 0; $counter < $array_size; $counter++) {
print "\t@$states [ 1 ]->\$counter\\n";
}

# did you really mean this?
for ($counter = 0; $counter < $array_size; $counter++) {
    print "\t@$states [ 1 ]->[$counter]\n";
}
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If so, once you've got slices and dereferencing under control, this is a clearer and more perlish way to iterate over an array.

for my $city (@{ $states->[1] }) {
    print "\t$city\n";
}

# or
for (@{ $states->[1] }) {
    print "\t$_\n";
}
[download]