you need square brackets...

$arr[0] = [1,2,3];
$arr[1] = [4,5,6];
$index=1;

print "$arr[$index][2]";
[download]

The square bracket returns a reference to an anonymous array. Your example is just a list, which is forced to scalar context (you're putting it into the first element of your array) which just returns the last element in your list. You can prove this by printing $arr[0];

You might also have noticed I changed the @'s to $'s, which it prefered when referencing a single element of an array...

my @array = (1,2,3);
my $array[0] = 4;
[download]

If you run your program with warnings on, it will tell you this.

references are a big subject, you might want to check out ...

perldoc perlref
[download]

or "Learing/Programming Perl" which are excellent books.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.