Monks, I am currently pondering this conundrum. I have an array of numbers (not shown below), and I need to randomly select a value from that array (n) number of times, without replacement.

I know this is possible with a splice  ($ranpop = splice(@holder, int rand(@holder), 1)); but I do not want to destroy the array.

I was thinking something along these lines: 

use strict;
use warnings;
my @final;
my $item;
my @list = (2, 1, 4, 3, 8, 5); #already selected from array
#image another loop someplace else that is pushing into @list

for (1 .. 5) { #getting 5 numbers not on the list above...

my $find = int rand (10); #my "array" I am picking from is 0-10


#below this is my attempt to solve my problem
my $found_flag = 0;

foreach my $item ( @list ) {
    if( $item eq $find ) {
        $found_flag = 1;
        last;
    }
}

if( $found_flag ) {
    print "Found $find.\n";
    until ( $find != $item ) {
        $find = int rand (10);
    }
}

#I tried to basically say
# if (the item is already in the array) {
#     pick a value until it is not found in the array
# }

push @final, $find;
} 
print "@final \n";

[download]
But I am doing something wrong, and I can not figure it out. Somewhere or something in that last loop needs to be adjusted. Any help is appreciated.

-Bio

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.

In reply to Select value from array w/o replacement (or destroying the array) by BioNrd

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