October 18, 2007 at 11:57 AM | categories:
unix, system administration, linux
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Discovered that the bash shell has a variable called $RANDOM, which outputs a pseudo-random number every time you call it. Sweet! Allowed me to randomize the lines in a file for a process I needed to do, thusly:
for i in `cat unusual.txt`; do echo "$RANDOM $i"; done | sort | sed -r 's/^[0-9]+ //' > randorder.txt
In other words, put a random number on every line, sort the file, then take off the random numbers. Worked like a charm.
