@foo = qw( a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w y z ); my @feh = sort { rand(1) >= .5 } @foo; # randomly sort my $upper = int( scalar(@feh) * .75 ); # upper index to get 75% of records print join (",", @feh[ 0 .. $upper]); #Example output: #C:\>perl randsort.pl #q,r,p,j,o,d,a,b,c,g,e,h,f,i,l,k,m,n,s #C:\>perl randsort.pl #t,g,r,s,q,o,p,b,h,e,f,a,c,d,m,n,l,k,i