Simplify your life.
"there's no requirement to use them all up before repeating. Just that I shouldn't re-use the same one twice or more in a row"
So you really don't need to keep track of anything more than the last one used.
I would use a simple text file with a single line containing the last value used. Read the last value from the file when you start, randomly select a values from your list until you get a 'new' value that doesn't match the previous (hopefully on the first try), then write the new value back to the file, replacing the previous one.
To do anything more would simply be a case of swating a mosquito with a with a lazer guided cruise missle (IMHO). Of course, this solution doesn't allow for much in the way of future enhancement.
use strict;
use warnings;
my @ids = qw(a b c d e f g h);
my $chosen_id = '';
my $last_id = '';
if (open (my $fh, 'recent')) {
$last_id = <$fh>;
close ($fh);
}
while (1) {
$chosen_id = @ids[ int( rand(@ids) ) ];
print "chosen: $chosen_id\n";
last if $chosen_id ne $last_id;
print "problem: $chosen_id is on the recent list, choose again\n";
}
# replace the file
open (my $fh, '>', 'recent')
or die "failed to open recent for write: $!\n";
print $fh $chosen_id;
close ($fh);
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