Set::Associate Essentially, this is a simple toolkit to map an infinite-many items to a corresponding finite-many values, i.e: A nick coloring algorithm. The most simple usage of this code gives out values from "items" sequentially, and remembers seen values and persists them within the scope of the program, i.e: my $set = Set::Associate->new( on_items_empty => Set::Associate::RefillItems->linear( items => [qw( red blue yellow )], ), ); sub color_nick { my $nick = shift; return colorize( $nick, $set->get_associated( $nick ); } ... printf '<< %s >> %s', color_nick( $nick ), $message; And this is extensible to use some sort of persisting allocation method such as a hash my $set = Set::Associate->new( on_items_empty => Set::Associate::RefillItems->linear( items => [qw( red blue yellow )], ), on_new_key => Set::Associate::NewKey->hash_sha1, ); sub color_nick { my $nick = shift; return colorize( $nick, $set->get_associated( $nick ); } ... printf '<< %s >> %s', color_nick( $nick ), $message; Alternatively, you could use 1 of 2 random forms: # Can produce colour runs if you're unlucky my $set = Set::Associate->new( on_items_empty => Set::Associate::RefillItems->linear( items => [qw( red blue yellow )], ), on_new_key => Set::Associate::NewKey->random_pick, ); # Will exhaust the colour variation before giving out the same colour # twice my $set = Set::Associate->new( on_items_empty => Set::Associate::RefillItems->shuffle( items => [qw( red blue yellow )], ), ); INSTALLATION This is a Perl module distribution. It should be installed with whichever tool you use to manage your installation of Perl, e.g. any of cpanm . cpan . cpanp -i . Consult http://www.cpan.org/modules/INSTALL.html for further instruction. Should you wish to install this module manually, the procedure is perl Makefile.PL make make test make install COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE This software is copyright (c) 2015 by Kent Fredric . This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.