Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Mon 11/29/2021 17:10:24 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings use Data::Dumper; my @t1 = ('ABCGE ABCGE', 'ABCGE FGCGB', 'ABCGE JHAGT'); my @t2 = ( [qw{ABCGE ABCGE}], [qw{ABCGE FGCGB}], [qw{ABCGE JHAGT}], ); print Dumper \@t1; print Dumper \@t2; ^Z $VAR1 = [ 'ABCGE ABCGE', 'ABCGE FGCGB', 'ABCGE JHAGT' ]; $VAR1 = [ [ 'ABCGE', 'ABCGE' ], [ 'ABCGE', 'FGCGB' ], [ 'ABCGE', 'JHAGT' ] ];