Turn the problem inside out: you want to print five groups of five numbers. That's the way you need to structure your nested loops.

You already have a random list of numbers so you can pull numbers off the front of the list 5 at a time using splice. So putting those together (with another small wrinkle) we get:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util 'shuffle';

my @numbers = shuffle(1 .. 50);

for (1 .. 5) {
    my @group = splice @numbers, 0, 5;
    
    print "$_\n" for @group;
    print "\n";
}
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The small wrinkle is the for @group "statement modifier" which is the nested loop that prints out the individual numbers in each group.

Note that to loop five time in Perl we can use for (1 .. 5) instead of the unwieldy and error prone C loop. The intent of the Perl loop is much clearer and much easier te get right.

Here's yet another way. The difference is that it will avoid duplicates of a given number in your "groups of 5."

use List::Util 'shuffle';

my @shuffled = shuffle ( 1 .. 50 );

print join ' ', splice( @shuffled, 0, 5 ), "\n" for 1 .. 5;
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#! /usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use List::Util qw{ shuffle };

my @numbers = shuffle(1 .. 50);
for my $index (0 .. $#numbers) {                          # replace wi
+th 0 .. 25 to stop after 5 lines.
    print $numbers[$index], $index % 5 == 4 ? "\n" : ' ';
}
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Do you mean this?

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util 'shuffle';
use List::MoreUtils qw(natatime);
use feature qw(say);

my $iterator = natatime 5, shuffle( 1 .. 50 );
my $count = 1;

while ( my @five = $iterator->() ) {
    say join " ", @five;
    $count++;
    last if $count > 5;
}

__END__

karls-mac-mini:monks karl$ ./1115111.pl
30 26 3 46 23
10 45 47 1 39
8 11 19 49 36
15 22 29 37 18
13 50 44 25 42
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See also List::MoreUtils.

Update: A variation:

my $iterator = natatime 5, shuffle( 1 .. 50 );
my @takatakina = map { [ $iterator->() ] } 1 .. 5;

say join " ", @{$_} for @takatakina;
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See also map and TMTOWTDI.

"Takatakina" is the Konnakol way to count to five. German musicians count "Ein Glas Bier für mich" - because of Take 5 mentioned below ;-)

Best regards, Karl

The  $count counter is not needed because the  natatime() iterator is exhausted after completely iterating over its list. (Such a counter would be needed if you wanted to stop short of iterator exhaustion.)

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"use List::Util 'shuffle';
 use List::MoreUtils qw(natatime);
 ;;
 my $iterator = natatime 5, shuffle 1 .. 50;
 ;;
 while (my @five = $iterator->()) {
   print qq{@five};
   }
 ;;
 print '---------';
 while (my @five =  $iterator->()) { print qq{@five}; }
"
47 16 22 40 27
14 8 35 36 21
46 43 9 42 17
31 2 18 33 24
11 1 44 7 3
38 49 41 25 39
15 37 29 12 5
23 45 10 6 26
20 19 28 50 34
32 13 4 30 48
---------
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---

Give a man a fish:  <%-(-(-(-<

The OP wrote:

"I want the program to terminate after it does this for 5 cycles"

You wrote:

"..if you wanted to stop short..."

That's what i wanted. My output:

karls-mac-mini:monks karl$ ./1115111.pl
30 26 3 46 23
10 45 47 1 39
8 11 19 49 36
15 22 29 37 18
13 50 44 25 42
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This are five cycles with five numbers.

Please correct me if i miss something.

Update: But i I surrender:

Alternate version:

for ( 1 .. 5 ) {
    my @five = $iterator->();
    say join " ", @five;
}
[download]

Best regards, Karl

«The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

Another "take 5" everybody! (P6 in-joke :):

@a = shuffle 1 .. 50; 
print splice @a, 0, 5 for 1 .. 5;;
7 15 32 24 41
50 22 25 21 28
11 3 45 48 44
42 30 10 36 38
17 26 2 18 33

@a = shuffle 1 .. 50; 
print splice @a, 0, 5 for 1 .. 5;;
11 31 48 5 44
25 39 3 40 34
33 16 14 47 49
17 41 37 4 42
50 20 13 24 45

@a = shuffle 1 .. 50; 
print splice @a, 0, 5 for 1 .. 5;;
9 6 31 35 7
29 37 36 26 22
32 3 8 1 2
4 21 45 40 43
23 18 30 50 42
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There is a subtle difference between generating five random numbers and selecting the first five of a randomly ordered set. (The former allows the possibility of duplicates.) Your text implies the former while your code implies the latter. Here is code for the former.

use strict;
use warnings;
printf "%2d\n", 1 + int(rand 50) for (1..5);
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UPDATE: Changed 'code' to 'text' as pointed out by GrandFather.

Random numbers can be generated using rand() function (see rand). This short script below prints 5 random numbers between 1 and 50. The group of numbers is sorted.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my %num;

while ((keys %num) < 5) {
  $num{int(rand(50)+1)} = 1;
}

print join(' ' , sort {$a <=> $b} keys %num) . "\n";
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pme,

This is exactly what I was looking to do. Now we are tasked with something additional: "Sum each group and display the results so that each number is on its own line." How would I go about doing something like this? Would I need to implement some sort of do/while or for/next loop?

Thank you in advance!

> How would I go about doing something like this?

perlintro is a good entry point to learn programing!

Cheers Rolf

PS: Je suis Charlie!

printf $_ == 5 ? "%2d\n" : "%2d ", int rand(50)+1 for (1..5) x 5;
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