NAME
shuffle —
print a random permutation of
the command line arguments
SYNOPSIS
shuffle |
[-0]
[-f filename
...] [-n
number]
[-p
number]
[arg]
[...] |
DESCRIPTION
The
shuffle program prints a random permutation (or
“shuffle”) of its command line arguments. This can be useful in
shell scripts for selecting a random order in which to do a set of tasks, view
a set of files, etc.
If the
-f option is given, the data is taken from that files'
contents or if the filename is
- “stdin”.
If the
-n option is given, its argument is treated as a
number, and the program prints a random permutation of the numbers greater
than or equal to 0 and less than the argument.
If the
-p option is given, its argument is treated as a
number, and the program prints that number of randomly selected lines or
arguments in a random order.
The
-0 option changes the field separator character from \n to
\0, so that the output is suitable to be sent to
xargs(1) (to handle filenames
with whitespace in them).
EXAMPLES
$ shuffle a b c d
c
b
d
a
$ shuffle -p 1 a b c d
d
$ shuffle -n 4 -p 2
0
3
SEE ALSO
jot(1),
random(6)
HISTORY
The
shuffle program first appeared in
NetBSD
1.4.
AUTHORS
Written by
Perry E. Metzger
⟨perry@piermont.com⟩.