Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi there, friends!

Writing exams again! This time my wish would be to randomize certain columns in a csv file. Given a file containing records consisting of 3 columns tab-separated:

A B C
A B C
A B C

I would love to get the columns of each record in random order...separated by a tab as well.

C B A
B C A
A C B
...

Love you all out there!


PS: This is not homework, I am an English teacher rewriting tests for my students.

Do not post classroom or homework problems in the main forums. Homework and coursework questions can only be posted in this forum under special homework rules.

Please review the rules, which you agreed to when you registered, if you have not already done so.

More-than-likely, posting homework in the main forums has resulting in a forum infraction. If you did not post homework, please explain the company you work for and the nature of the problem you are working on.

If you did post homework in the main forums, please review the guidelines for posting homework and repost.

Thank You.

The UNIX and Linux Forums.

I promise it is not homework...on the contrary, I am a teacher.

Code:

awk -v rn=$RANDOM '
BEGIN {
   srand(rn);
}
{
 f=NF;
 for (i=1 ; i<=f; i++) a[i]=i;
 n=1;
 while (n<4) {
    d=int((rand() * f+1));
    d=int((rand() * f+1));
    if (d > 0 && d < f+1) {
       if (d in a && a[d]) {a1[n]=$d; delete a[d]; n++;}
    }
 }
 $0="";
 for (i=1; i<(f+1); i++) $0=$0 OFS a1[i];
 $1=$1;
 print;
 for (i in a1) delete a1[i];
 for (i in a) delete a[i];
}

' OFS="\t" infile

Uff, thanks rdrtx1m but I am not sure how to use this code...i am such a newbie. ...still trying to figure it out...

Try also

Code:

while read TMP; do echo $(shuf -e $TMP) | tr ' ' '\t' ; done <file
C    B    A
A    C    B
A    B    C

Yep, both scripts work...as log as the options to be shuffled are single letters/words (eg. A, B...just, never, ever...) but, what about if the options are groups or words?

Option A Option B Option C
I was I have been I will be
She's done She'll do She'd do
... ... ...

...and in case I had 4 options?

Thank you so much to you mates.