Hello everyone,

What I'm trying to do is figure out how to ftp a set of random files each day about 50 or so maybe more or less.

I have a folder on my server that gets about 1000 or so new files each day, each with today's date in the file name. We just want to take a sample each day for quality checks.

eg. testnumberssomethingelse20071121morenumbers

What I need to do is grab 50 random files for today's date and upload them via ftp. I have all the code for ftp and what not, I just don't know how to pick out 50 or so files out of 1000+ and direct them to my ftp process.

Here is my current script without randomization, which I've gather mostly from here.

#! /bin/ksh
stty -echo
#print -n Enter Password-
#read PASS
print
stty echo
exec 4>&1

HOST=iphere
USER=test123
DESTDIR=/
SOURCEDIR=/something1/something2
PASS=test123

cd $SOURCEDIR

ftp -nv >&4 2>&4 |&
print -p open $HOST
print -p user $USER $PASS
print -p binary
#print -p cd $DESTDIR

ls | while read filename ; do
        [[ -f $filename ]] && print -p put $filename
done
print -p close
print -p bye
wait
exit 0

Use the rand() command

1) List the filenames to a file
2) Use rand(no. of filenames in the file)
3) Use the result of the rand() as the position of the filename list in the file.
4) Get the filename to ftp

Here is a cool trick that I'm borrowing from cfajohnson... First put a random number in front of each file name:

ls | awk 'BEGIN {srand()} {printf "%.0f %s \n",rand()*99999, $0; }'

then sort it. This will put the lines in a random order. Then just pick the first few lines:

ls | awk 'BEGIN {srand()} {printf "%.0f %s \n",rand()*99999, $0; }' |sort -n | head -2 | awk '{print $2}'

Perderabo/cfajohnson,

This works great!

Thank you.