SHUFFLE(1) BSD General Commands Manual SHUFFLE(1) 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 to , 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>. BSD February 18, 2009 BSD