use Data::Dumper; my @aoa = ( [ 1 .. 5 ], [ 6 .. 10 ] ); my @new = map [@$_], @aoa; $aoa[0] = [ qw/ one two three four five / ]; print "aoa - ", map(@$_, @aoa), $/; print "new - ", map(@$_, @new), $/; __output__ aoa - onetwothreefourfive678910 new - 12345678910