how about just filter out the recent ids with grep before doing the rand(), e.g. 
# ...
my @not_recent = grep !defined( $recent_ids{ $_ } ), @ids;
my $idno;
{ use integer; $idno = (1+$#not_recent) * rand(); 
}
# ...

[download]
or alternatively, sort the items by $somehash ||= -M item into the array and just shift off the first three before doing the rand().

-M

Free your mind

In reply to Re: Don't-Repeat-Myself code for improvement by Moron
in thread Don't-Repeat-Myself code for improvement by Cody Pendant

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