#!usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; use constant { HOSTNAME => 0, TIMESTAMP1 => 1, TIMESTAMP2 => 2, TEXT => 3, }; my $set = []; my $record1 = [ 'box', '200412311931', '200503190712', 'Hello World!', # yada yada yada ]; my $record2 = [ 'box2', '200412311931', '200503190712', 'foo bar baz', # yada yada yada ]; push @$set, $record1; push @$set, $record2; print Dumper $set; print Dumper grep { $_->[HOSTNAME] eq 'box' } @$set; # filtering records