I looked in my copy of "The Perl Cookbook" a very, very handy critter to have around and highly recommended by me. There are all sorts of solutions to common problems - well worth the money.

First step is a better shuffle algorithm, which is right there in Recipe 14.7, the fisher-yates algorithm. I don't see the need to keep the suits separate, generate an array (or just type it in manually) with all 52 cards, shuffle and away you go!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Data::Dumper;
 
my @deck = make_deck();           
fisher_yates_shuffle(\@deck); #in place shuffle
print Dumper \@deck;

# use pop or shift of @deck to deal a single card
# or perhaps use splice to deal out multiple cards
# the cards are already randomized so it doesn't matter
# how you deal 'em.

my @deal4 = splice(@deck,0,4);
print "4 cards: @deal4\n"; #4 cards: 6_heart 9_heart J_heart Q_spade

# From Perl Cookbook  Recipe 14.7    
#    Randomizing an Array with fisher_yates_shuffle

sub fisher_yates_shuffle 
{
    my $array = shift;
    my $i;
    for ($i = @$array; --$i; ) 
    {
        my $j = int rand ($i+1);
        next if $i == $j;
        @$array[$i,$j] = @$array[$j,$i];
    }
}

sub make_deck   #or just use a fixed array with 52 cards
{
   my @cards = ( 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,'J','Q','K','A');
   my @deck;
   foreach my $suit qw(spade diamond heart club)
   {
      push @deck, map{"$_"."_$suit"}@cards;
   }
   return @deck;
}
[download]