I'm having trouble with this. If any of the first list elements in the AoA is set to a non numeric number, I want to change it to what my "$test" variable is set to.

In the example below, the "null" list element should be changed to "xray". How can I get this to work? 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Data::Dumper;

my @aoa;

push @aoa, [ "null", "44", "4" ];
push @aoa, [ "6", "24", "6" ];

my $array = \@aoa;

#  show my data structure
print Dumper $array;


my $test = "xray";


#  change first list element to variable "$test" if it isn't a number.
@array =  map { $_->[0] =~ s/[0-9]*/$test/ } @$array ;

print Dumper \@array;

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In reply to AoA Selective Element Substitution by awohld

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