Question

I have an array that is read from a flat file that looks like this:

@Array = ('01026¦Cummington¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01026¦West Cummington¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01030¦East Hampton¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01027¦Easthampton¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01027¦Loudville¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01030¦Mount Tom¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01027¦Westhampton¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01028¦East Longmeadow¦Massachusetts¦MA',
          '01029¦Big Pond¦Massachusetts¦MA');

What I want to do is get three random “numerical values” of @Array[1] so I get a output that looks like this:

print "01028
       01026
       01030";

Answer 1

If I understood you right, it is easy to implement using List::Util‘s shuffle function:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use List::Util qw( shuffle );

my @array = (
    '01026¦Cummington¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01026¦West Cummington¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01030¦East Hampton¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01027¦Easthampton¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01027¦Loudville¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01030¦Mount Tom¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01027¦Westhampton¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01028¦East Longmeadow¦Massachusetts¦MA',
    '01029¦Big Pond¦Massachusetts¦MA',
);

my @shuffled_array = ( shuffle 0 .. @array - 1 )[ 0 .. 2 ];
print join "\n", map $array[$_] =~ /^(\d+)/, @shuffled_array;