NAME

shuffle —

print a random permutation of the command line arguments

SYNOPSIS

shuffle [-f filename ...] [-n number] [-p number] [arg] [...]

DESCRIPTION

The shuffle program prints a random permutation (or “shuffle”) of its input lines. 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.

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

HISTORY

The shuffle program first appeared in NetBSD 1.4.

AUTHORS

Written by Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com).

BUGS

The random number generator isn't that great, and thus the permutations often aren't that great.