I think your Problem is a Knapsack problem . There is a cpan module for Knapsack Algorithm (Algorithm::Knapsack)

Algorithm::Knapsack

use Algorithm::Knapsack;

    my $knapsack = Algorithm::Knapsack->new(
        capacity => $capacity,
        weights  => \@weights,
    );

    $knapsack->compute();


    foreach my $solution ($knapsack->solutions()) {
        foreach my $index (@{$solution}) {
            # do something with $weights[$index]
        }
    }
[download]

-perl_lover-

Edit: g0n - reparented to root node