Not sure how you ended up doing it, but if you simply create an array for every row, scroll through hashes and assign the right columnar data to the right row array. The row arrays can be elements of a hash to help make it easier to deal with. @{$matrix{"1"}} = @row1 $$matrix{"1"}}[0] = 90; $$matrix{"1"}}1 = 70 and so forth, where {"1"} is the row num of your original data and the key value of the hash, and the 1 is the #id'x' number or column number or element number of the hash - might put totals in column zero or whatever...