use warnings;
use strict;
#use Data::Dump qw/pp/;
use Test::More tests=>2;

sub arr_alias { \ @_ }                  # arr_ref to list of aliases

sub getsubset {
    my ( $data, $range ) = @_;
	my ( $rows, $cols )  = @$range;     # [y0,y1], [x0,x1] # YMMV!

    return
      [
       map {
           arr_alias
             @$_[ $cols->[0] .. $cols->[1] ] # x-slice
       }  @$data[ $rows->[0] .. $rows->[1] ] # y-slice
      ];
}

my $data =
  [
   ['a','b','c','d'],
   ['e','f','g','h'],
   ['i','j','k','l'],
   ['m','n','o','p']
  ];

my $range  = [ [1,2], [1,2] ];          # or any other useful syntax!
my $subset = getsubset($data, $range);

is_deeply
  $subset,
  [
   ['f','g'],
   ['j','k']
  ];

# Part 2:
$subset->[0][1] = 'X';
$subset->[1][0] = 'Y';

is_deeply
  $data,
  [
   ['a','b','c','d'],
   ['e','f','X','h'],
   ['i','Y','k','l'],
   ['m','n','o','p']
  ];

##</code><code>##

C:/Perl_524/bin\perl.exe  d:/tmp/matrix_range.pl 
1..2
ok 1
ok 2