Whilst I have always proven to be too lazy to create an account on PerlMonks, I have been a long time lurker.
Yet again a post from ikegami has helped me understand concepts I previously hadn't encountered or fully grasped the subtleties of.
I had seen the map function but had not grasped how I could utilise it and I have also just been educated regarding ternary operators.
Thank you ikegami for your helpful and educational post, the code works perfectly.

If I may impose on your time a little more, are there alternative algorithms that may achieve the desired end result? Is this the method you would use to achieve the outlined result or is there a better way?
I know better is rather subjective so to define better my interest lies in for improvements in regards to good programming practices, efficiency of code and also clarity of code.