2 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
12 .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
13 .\" must display the following acknowledgment:
14 .\" This product includes software developed by the University of
15 .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors.
16 .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
17 .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
18 .\" without specific prior written permission.
20 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
21 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
22 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
23 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
24 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
25 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
26 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
27 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
28 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
29 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
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 $
34 .\" $DragonFly: src/games/random/random.6,v 1.2 2003/06/17 04:25:24 dillon Exp $
41 .Nd random lines from a file or random numbers
49 has two distinct modes of operations. The default is to read in lines
50 from stdin and randomly write them out to stdout with a probability of
55 for this mode of operation is 2, giving each line a 50/50 chance of
58 The second mode of operation is to read in a file from
60 and randomize the contents of the file and send it back out to stdout.
61 The contents can be randomized based off of newlines or based off of
62 space characters as determined by
66 for this mode of operation is 1, which gives each line a chance to be
71 The options are as follows:
78 does not read or write anything, and simply exits with a random
85 option is used to specify the
87 to read from. stdin is used if the filename is set to "-".
89 Randomize the input via newlines (the default).
93 option guarantees that the output is unbuffered.
97 not to select the same line or word from a file more than once (the
98 default). This does not guarantee uniqueness if there are two of the
99 same tokens from the input, but it does prevent selecting the same
100 token more than once.
104 that it is okay for it to reuse any given line or word when creating a
107 Randomize words separated by
115 There is no index used when printing out tokens from the list which
116 makes rather slow for large files (10MB+). If this were used in
117 performance sensitive areas, I'd do something about it. For smaller
118 files, however, it should still be quite fast and efficient.
122 game was brought in from BSD 4.4 Lite by jkh in 1994. The
123 functionality to randomizing lines and words was added in 2003 by