netbsd man page for shuffle

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