Why on earth would you want to effectively randomly delete the keys of a hash to get to a fixed number? You won't get the memory back if that is the reason. Are you sure you don't want a stack or a queue or a heap? Just an ordinary array? Here is another way to reduce the key numbers to $n. 

%hash = map{ $_, $hash{$_} }(keys %hash)[0..$n-1];

[download]

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re: Delete all hash keys except for n of them by tachyon
in thread Delete all hash keys except for n of them by Anonymous Monk

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