tye suggested that minima be added to List::Util. It looks something like this. Of course, his minima was probably terser/cleaner :)

sub minima(&@) {
   my $value = shift(@_);

   my @matches;
   my $min_val;

   {
      local $_ = shift(@_);
      $min_val = &$value();
      @matches = $_;
   }

   foreach (@_) {
      my $val = &$value();
      if    ($val == $min_val) { push(@matches, $_); }
      elsif ($val <  $min_val) { $min_val = $val; @matches = $_; }
   }

   return @matches;
}

[download]

If so, the original question can be solved with:

use List::Util qw( minima maxstr );

my $val = maxstr
          minima { length }
          @list;

[download]

and the bonus question can be solved with:

use List::Util qw( minima );

sub pick { $_[rand(@_)] }

my $val = pick
          minima { length }
          @list;

[download]

In reply to Re: Efficiently finding values of an extremity by ikegami
in thread Efficiently finding values of an extremity by Limbic~Region

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