I would advise to avoid actually removing elements.
Instead have multidimensional hash of column and row.
You can use this multidimensional hash to record
whether a given index has already been supplied before.
Note the use of a closure to make the function stateful.
That is the reason for the reset_hash function.
You must be able to reset the hash for another run.
## just a sketch
my %columns; ## to associate columns with
## column numbers
#
## $columns{1} should return
## a reference to the
## first column list
{ ## closure cleanliness
my $seen; ## keeps track of what we have seen
## used to reset hash within closure between runs
sub reset_hash{
undef $seen
}
##function expects column number
sub find_and_dont_actually_remove_but_say_we_did{
my $column_number = shift;
my $column = $columns{$column_number}; ## keeping as a referen
+ce to
## avoid obscene copy-p
+asta
my $rand;
until (not $seen->{$column_number}->{$rand = int(rand(@$column
+))}){
## nothing to see here
}
$seen->{$column_number}->{$rand} = "looks familiar";
return $column->[$rand]
}
}
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