I have reopend this thread becasue the member gave a satisfactory justification for the thread by PM.

Sorry David, seems I was a bit hasty. For future reference if you explain what you are trying to achieve it might avoid this, in particular since you are posting from an educational domain.

ksh code:

Code:

set +A files ./*/*.jpg    # create an array of the files.
N=${#files[@]}           # Number of members in the array
((N=RANDOM%N))
randomfile=${files[$N]}

bash:

Code:

files=(./*/*.jpg)        # create an array of the files.
N=${#files[@]}          # Number of members in the array
((N=RANDOM%N))
randomfile=${files[$N]}