So you want to have a bunch of strings

So you want to stuff those strings under one thing, one bucket, one box, one variable

So you want to have an array-of-strings

So you have more than one array-of-strings

So keeping more than one array-of-strings in an array, seems natural

Unlesss, you want to name each and every one of those arrays of bunches of things, then keep them in a hash

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict;
use warnings;
my @feet = qw/ left right /;
my @shoes = qw/ loafer sneaker boot /;
my @lowers = ( \@feet, \@shoes );

## $lower{feet} is prounounced lower-of-feet
## $lower{shoes} is prounounced lower-of-shoes

my %lower = ( feet => [ @feet ], shoes => [ @shoes ] );
print "$lower{feet}[0] $lower{shoes}[0]\n";
print "$lower{feet}[1] $lower{shoes}[1]\n";
print "----\n";

for my $lower ( @lowers ){
   for my $low ( @$lower ){
      print " $low ";
   }
   print "\n";
}

print "----\n";
## while( my( $key, $value ) = each %lower ){
while( my( $lower, $of_array ) = each %lower ){
    print "$lower $_\n" for @$of_array;
}
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More elaborate and coprehensive tutorial in http://learn.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/, Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes, perlintro, chromatics free book Modern Perl a loose description of how experienced and effective Perl 5 programmers work....You can learn this too.

Anonymous Monk has proposed a hash of arrays data structure, which enables you to name the sub_arrays. This is fine if you need to names these arrays. If you don't particularly need to name them, then the array of arrays structure that I outline above is just as fine for what you want to do. You could have something like this:

It is then easy to process the strings of any subarray.

Update 08:35 UTC: added the following examples under the Perl debugger:

  DB<1> @array = (["str_1_1", "str_1-2"], ["str_2_1", "str_2_2"])
  DB<2>
  DB<2> x @array
0  ARRAY(0x253a70)
   0  'str_1_1'
   1  'str_1-2'
1  ARRAY(0x58f8a8)
   0  'str_2_1'
   1  'str_2_2'
  DB<3> x $array[1]
0  ARRAY(0x58f8a8)
   0  'str_2_1'
   1  'str_2_2'
  DB<4>  p "$array[1][$_] \n" for 0..1
str_2_1
str_2_2
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