#!/usr/bin/perl -W use strict; my (@array_1,@array_2,@array_3,@array_4,@array_5,@array_6); my @big = \(@array_1,@array_2,@array_3,@array_4,@array_5,@array_6); #my @big = map [], 1..6; my @thearray = (1, 4, 6); #my $line = ; my $line = 'able baker charlie roger fox dog'; my @column = split " ", $line; push @{$big[$_]}, [$line, $column[$_]] foreach map {$_-1} @thearray; use Data::Dumper; #print Data::Dumper->Dump([\@big], ['*big']); print Data::Dumper->Dump( [ \(@array_1,@array_2,@array_3,@array_4,@array_5,@array_6)], [qw(*array_1 *array_2 *array_3 *array_4 *array_5 *array_6)], ); #### @array_1 = ( [ 'able baker charlie roger fox dog', 'able' ] ); @array_2 = ( ); @array_3 = ( ); @array_4 = ( [ 'able baker charlie roger fox dog', 'roger' ] ); @array_5 = ( ); @array_6 = ( [ 'able baker charlie roger fox dog', 'dog' ] );