Commands tagged random

* grep -i leaves only mp3 files (case insentitive)

* sort -R randomizes list (may use GNU 'shuf' instead).

* the sed command will add double quotes around each filename (needed if odd characters are present)

Here's my version. It's a bit lengthy but I prefer it since it's all Bash.

Using urandom to get random data, deleting non-letters with tr and print the first $1 bytes.

If you don't have seq, you can use perl.

Ever need to get some text that is a specific number of characters long? Use this function to easily generate it! Doesn't look pretty, but sure does work for testing purposes!

Seeing that _sort_ its been used, why not just _use_ it. ;)

The pwgen program generates passwords which are designed to be easily memorized by humans, while being as secure as possible. Human-memorable passwords are never going to be as secure as completely completely random passwords. [from pwgen man page]

According to the gpg(1) manual:

--gen-random 0|1|2 count

Emit count random bytes of the given quality level 0, 1 or 2. If count is not given or zero, an endless sequence of random bytes will be emitted. If used with --armor the output will be base64 encoded. PLEASE, don't use this command unless you know what you are doing; it may remove precious entropy from the system!

If your entropy pool is critical for various operations on your system, then using this command is not recommended to generate a secure password. With that said, regenerating entropy is as simple as:

This is a quick way to generate a strong, base64 encoded, secure password of arbitrary length, using your entropy pool (example above shows a 30-character long password).

Give files a random name (don't ask why :-)

The function will rename files but maintain their extensions.

BUG: If a file doesn't have an extension it will end up with a dot at the end of the name.

The parameter '8' for pwgen controls the length of filenames - eight random characters.

Also looks in subfolders

I used only shuf command.

Here's a bash version using an array.

Choose random file from current folder. Avoids using ls.

Good if you have your music like Artist/(Year) Album/Song

random file from files in directory

The same thing using only Bash built-in's.

For readability I've kept the variables out, but it could me made extremely more compact (and totally unreadable!) by stuffing everything inside the single echo command.

Select a file/folder at random.

I use this command to select a random movie from my movie collection..

Prepending

env LC_CTYPE=C

fixes a problem with bad bytes in /dev/urandom on Mac OS X

This will show a random cow with cowsay.

A bash version.