i just intensely dislike the: @myAvailableNumbers = keys %myAvailableNumbers; line anyone know how i can rewrite that section to get rid of it?

If you are using @array = keys %hash; only so you can use $#array later, you can use either of the methods in the script below. The fist one uses the interpolation trick from Recipe 1.10 in the Cookbook, which isn't very readable. The second test is pretty straight forward.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
$|++;

use Test::Simple tests => 2;

my $size = int( rand(500) );
my %hash = map { $_ => 1 } my @array = ( 0 .. $size );

ok( $#array == (@{[ %hash ]})/2 - 1, 'Recipe 1.10 from the Cookbook' )
+;
ok( $#array == keys(%hash)-1, 'keys minus 1' );
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Zaxo++ for his elegan solution to the problem at hand.

  dug