#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @AoA1 = ([1, 'a'], [2, 'b']);

my @AoA2;
push @AoA2, @AoA1;

$AoA2[0][0] = $AoA1[0][0];
print "$AoA1[0][0], $AoA2[0][0]\n";

$AoA2[0][0] ++;
print "$AoA1[0][0], $AoA2[0][0]\n";
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1, 1
2, 1
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1, 1
2, 2
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In Perl, an array of arrays is really an array of references to arrays. You can see that by printing @AoA1:

say @AoA1; # ARRAY(0x606df0)ARRAY(0x621e70)
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When you push @AoA2, @AoA1; you're pushing the same references on to @AoA2:

say @AoA2; # ARRAY(0x606df0)ARRAY(0x621e70)
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The hex numbers are the same, indicating the both refer to the same area of memory.

So, to answer your original question, changing one of the array elements, will also change the corresponding element in the other array. To get round that, you could use

• the freeze & thaw functions from the core module Storable
• the CPAN module Clone
• some Perl

use Clone 'clone';
my @AoA3 = @{ clone( \@AoA1 ) };
say @AoA3; # ARRAY(0x7c46c0)ARRAY(0x7c4720)

use Storable qw/freeze thaw/;
my @AoA4 = @{ thaw( freeze( \@AoA1 ) ) };
say @AoA4; # ARRAY(0x7095c8)ARRAY(0x709718)

my @AoA5 = map { [ @$_ ] } @AoA1;
say @AoA5; # ARRAY(0x67ff58)ARRAY(0x7e8468)
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Storable and Clone will work with any data structure but the pure perl method will need to be tailored to each specific data structure.

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Unless I state otherwise, all my code runs with strict and warnings