#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util qw( shuffle reduce );

my @list = qw( f a d e z x c b );

sub in_order {
  my $state = 1;
  our( $a, $b );
  my $ordered = reduce { if( $state and $b lt $a ) { $state = undef; } $b } @_;
  return $state;
}

my $shuffles = 0;
my @ordered = @list;
my %memory;
until ( in_order( @ordered ) ) {
  $memory{ join("\0",@ordered) } = 1;
  while( 1 ) {
    @ordered = shuffle( @list );
    $shuffles++;
    last unless $memory{ join("\0",@ordered) };
  }
}

print "took $shuffles shuffles to get\n\t", join( "\n\t", @ordered ), "\n";

exit 0;

__END__