What you've done is fine, but I'm posting to comment on the other advice you've been given: use a state variable.

Unfortunately, non-scalar state variables are pretty much broken. Consider:

foo();

sub foo {
    state @verbose = 1..10;
    say shift @$verbose;
}
[download]

gives an Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden error.

However, there are work-arounds, such as:

foo(); 
foo(); 
foo();

sub foo {
    state $verbose = [1..10];
    say shift @$verbose;
}
__END__
1
2
3
[download]

Using diagnostics states that "Constructions such as state (@a) = foo() will be supported in a future perl release".