You got the output example backwards.

So I did. Ack! But you got the jist of my question.

Whether sticking to that produces the most useful function is another issue, but it does produce the shortest string and puts value on the inclusion of text when the text isn't identical.

Ah. Interesting. It sounds like there is essentially a trade-off to be made, between shortest possible and inclusion of meaningful text. I guess I would tend to weight the latter more heavily than you did. Either that, or not at all, which is (I believe) what Text::Abbrev does.

Here's my solution which gives absolute priority to inclusion of meaningful text. It doesn't maximize compression of strings such as xxxxxxxxxx the way yours does, but I'm viewing those as unlikely input. For "meaningful" text such as Four score..., the results are satisfactory (IMHO).

   my @values = <DATA>;
   print "\nValues:\n", @values;
   chomp @values;

   sub max_len
   {
      my $len = -1;
      for ( @_ )
      {
         $len < length $_ and
         $len = length $_;
      }
      $len
   }

   sub min
   {
      $_[0] < $_[1] ? $_[0] : $_[1]
   }

   my $max_length = min( 10, max_len(@values) );


   # normally, we only want to allow valid ID characters:
   my @idents = map { s/\W+/_/g; $_ } @values;

   print "\nIdentifiers (raw):\n", map "$_\n", @idents;

   print "\n\n\n\n";


   my %mapping; # contains the final result

   { # this is the part that does the real work:
   my %h;
   for ( @idents )
   {
      push @{ $h{ substr $_, 0, $max_length } }, $_;
   }
   for ( keys %h )
   {
      my $n = @{ $h{$_} };
      my $n_width = length $n;
      if ( $n == 1 )
      {
         $mapping{$_} = $h{$_}[0];
      }
      else
      {
         my $prefix = substr $_, 0, $max_length - $n_width;
         my $oneup;
         for ( @{ $h{$_} } )
         {
            my $k;
            do {
               $k = $prefix . sprintf '%0'.$n_width.'d', ++$oneup;
            } while exists $mapping{$k};
            $mapping{$k} = $_;
         }
      }
   }
   } # end of main algorithm.

   for ( sort keys %mapping )
   {
      print "$_ => '$mapping{$_}'\n";
   }

   __DATA__
   line one
   line two
   lines end here not
   lines end here too
   yyyyyyy
   yyyyyyy
   xxxxxxxxxx
   xxxxxxxxxx
   zzzzzzzzzzzzz
   zzzzzzzzzzzzz
   r
   r
   rr
   rr
   r1
   r1
   r12
   r12
   Four score and seven years ago, our fathers...
   Four score and seven years ago, our mothers...
   Four score and seven years ago, our brothers...
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