It's not a limitation of Perl at all. At least for some values of “limitation”.

The cause of this is that there is no two dimensional array in Perl. You are constructing a representation of such by using an array of arrays, but a one-dimensional array of one-dimensional arrays is not the same as a two dimensional array. There are fewer constraints on such a data structure (the subarrays need not be uniform in length) but in turn, it also loses some expressiveness since you only address one array at a time. You can still represent all operations possible on a two-dimesional array using an array of arrays, but it does require looping.

To do what the OP wants to do, it would also have to be possible to say @{ \@a, \@b, \@c }[ 3 ], which it is not.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re^2: Extracting columns from a two dimensional array by Aristotle
in thread Extracting columns from a two dimensional array by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.