Since the distance between A and B is the same as distance between B and A, you are looking for unordered combinations of two words, so you presumably want to remove a word once is has been combined with all other words, so that you don't find the same pair again. Here is a quick simple example to make such combinations: 
use strict;
use warnings;
my @array = sort {$a <=> $b} qw/ 23 45 12 4 8 7 5/;

while (my $item = shift @array) {
    print "$item $_\n" for @array;
}

[download]
This will print all combinations of the numbers in the list: 
4 5
4 7
4 8
4 12
4 23
4 45
5 7
5 8
5 12
5 23
5 45
7 8
7 12
7 23
7 45
8 12
8 23
8 45
12 23
12 45
23 45

[download]
Just replace the print statement by the distance calculation (and the number in the original list by your words), and you're done. Just three lines of code.

In reply to Re: Compare each array element to the rest, sequentially by Laurent_R
in thread Compare each array element to the rest, sequentially by Anonymous Monk

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