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32 .\" @(#)random.6 8.2 (Berkeley) 3/31/94
33 .\" $FreeBSD: src/games/random/random.6,v 1.3.2.3 2003/02/15 10:34:35 seanc Exp $
40 .Nd random lines from a file or random numbers
48 has two distinct modes of operations. The default is to read in lines
49 from stdin and randomly write them out to stdout with a probability of
54 for this mode of operation is 2, giving each line a 50/50 chance of
57 The second mode of operation is to read in a file from
59 and randomize the contents of the file and send it back out to stdout.
60 The contents can be randomized based off of newlines or based off of
61 space characters as determined by
65 for this mode of operation is 1, which gives each line a chance to be
70 The options are as follows:
77 does not read or write anything, and simply exits with a random
84 option is used to specify the
86 to read from. stdin is used if the filename is set to "-".
88 Randomize the input via newlines (the default).
92 option guarantees that the output is unbuffered.
96 not to select the same line or word from a file more than once (the
97 default). This does not guarantee uniqueness if there are two of the
98 same tokens from the input, but it does prevent selecting the same
103 that it is okay for it to reuse any given line or word when creating a
106 Randomize words separated by
114 There is no index used when printing out tokens from the list which
115 makes rather slow for large files (10MB+). If this were used in
116 performance sensitive areas, I'd do something about it. For smaller
117 files, however, it should still be quite fast and efficient.
121 game was brought in from BSD 4.4 Lite by jkh in 1994. The
122 functionality to randomizing lines and words was added in 2003 by