Commands tagged random sorted by votes

Commands tagged random (101)

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lotto generator
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

shuf -i 1-49 -n 6 | sort -n | xargs

niall · 2011-01-05 00:07:46 3
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

Also looks in subfolders
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

find . | shuf -n1

unixmonkey8119 · 2011-04-01 22:57:01 5
Bingo-like raffle

Random choose numbers from 1 to 100 with 5 seconds interval without duplicates. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
67
92
40
13
43
97
```
3

for i in $(seq 1 100 | sort -R); do echo $i; sleep 5; done

fernandomerces · 2012-09-25 17:47:32 29
Fill the screen with randomly colored lines

This one-liner fills the screen with randomly colored lines.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

while :; do printf "\e[48;2;$((RANDOM % 256));$((RANDOM % 256));$((RANDOM % 256))m%*s\e[0m" $(tput cols) ""; sleep 0.1; done

wuseman1 · 2023-07-04 00:38:46 354
continuously print string as if being entered from the keyboard

Cycles continuously through a string printing each character with a random delay less than 1 second. First parameter is min, 2nd is max. Example: 1 3 means sleep random .1 to .3. Experiment with different values. The 3rd parameter is the string. The sleep will help with battery life/power consumption. cycle 1 3 $(openssl rand 100 | xxd -p) Fans of "The Shining" might get a kick out of this: cycle 1 4 ' All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

cycle(){ while :;do((i++));echo -n "${3:$(($i%${#3})):1}";sleep .$(($RANDOM%$2+$1));done;}

putnamhill · 2010-10-08 23:45:40 5
Random unsigned integer

Reads 4 bytes from the random device and formats them as unsigned integer between 0 and 2^32-1. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
2343653312
```
2

od -N 4 -t uL -An /dev/random | tr -d " "

hfs · 2010-11-09 07:57:16 5
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

random file from files in directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

ls -1 | shuf -n 1

quincymd · 2011-03-13 22:14:57 5
Rename a file with a random name

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. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
~$ ls
apple.png  banana.jpg  cherry.gif
~/p$ rf *
~/p$ ls
necuzora.png  seeheoye.gif  veefeiwa.jpg
```
2

rf() { for i in "$@"; do mv "$i" "$(pwgen 8 1).${i##*.}"; done }

flatcap · 2011-06-22 07:45:23 3
Shuffle mp3 files in current folder and play them.

* 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)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

ls | grep -i mp3 | sort -R | sed -e 's/.*/"&"/' | xargs mpg123

retrodanny · 2012-03-10 20:51:36 5
Matrix Style

Unlike other alternatives, this command only relies on bash builtins and should also work on windows platforms with the bash executable. Sparseness corresponds to the number 128 and can be adjusted. To print all possible digits instead of only 0 and 1 replace RANDOM%2 by RANDOM%10 or RANDOM%16 to add letters [A-F]. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
           0                         0              0                    0          0 
         01               0              1       1     00   0                   1      
 1                   0         0         0                 0         1                
0              0 0                       0      0                          0           
     1          1  0             1          1             1                      0     
 1        0         1                            0   0           0                  1   
 1                       0     1 
```
2

while true; do printf "\e[32m%X\e[0m" $((RANDOM%2)); for ((i=0; i<$((RANDOM%128)); i++)) do printf " "; done; done

seb1245 · 2012-11-27 10:40:42 11
Generate random password on Mac OS X

Feel free to put this in your ~/.profile: random(){ cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc $1 | head -c $2; echo; } Then use it to generate passwords: random [:alnum:] 16 Or DNA sequences: random ACGT 256
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc a-zA-Z0-9 | head -c 16; echo

yakovlev · 2014-02-05 15:04:07 6
Read random news on the internet

Access a random news web page on the internet. The Links browser can of course be replaced by Firefox or any modern graphical web browser.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

links $( a=( $( lynx -dump -listonly "http://news.google.com" | grep -Eo "(http|https)://[a-zA-Z0-9./?=_-]*" | grep -v "google.com" | sort | uniq ) ) ; amax=${#a[@]} ; n=$(( `date '+%s'` % $amax )) ; echo ${a[n]} )

pascalvaucheret · 2016-07-26 11:52:12 54

get the full description of a randomly selected package from the list of installed packages on a debian system

I put this command on my ~/.bashrc in order to learn something new about installed packages on my Debian/Ubuntu system each time I open a new terminal Show Sample Output

dpkg-query --status $(dpkg --get-selections | awk '{print NR,$1}' | grep -oP "^$( echo $[ ( ${RANDOM} % $(dpkg --get-selections| wc -l) + 1 ) ] ) \K.*")

acavagni · 2019-06-01 13:24:07 45

Print a random 8 digit number

Don't need to pipe the output into rs if you just tell jot to use a null separator character.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

jot -s '' -r -n 8 0 9

Hal_Pomeranz · 2009-08-24 13:35:20 4
Produce a pseudo random password with given length in base 64

Of course you will have to install Digest::SHA and perl before this will work :) Maximum length is 43 for SHA256. If you need more, use SHA512 or the hexadecimal form: sha256_hex() Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
nqSj9EG1qsQ
```
1

perl -MDigest::SHA -e 'print substr( Digest::SHA::sha256_base64( time() ), 0, $ARGV[0] ) . "\n"' <length>

udog · 2010-04-30 21:45:46 3
command line fu roulette

retrieves the html from a random command line fu page, then finds commands on the page and prints them alternatively, pipe to bash (add "| bash" to the end) to execute the command (very risky) edit: had to adjust to properly display the portion that replaces HTML characters (e.g. " -> ")
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

wget -qO - www.commandlinefu.com/commands/random | grep "<div class=\"command\">" | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g; s/^[ \t]*//; s/"/"/g; s/</</g; s/>/>/g; s/&/\&/g'

smop · 2010-08-12 23:58:24 9
shell equivalent of a boss button

Nobody wants the boss to notice when you're slacking off. This will fill your shell with random data, parts of it highlighted. Note that 'highlight' is the Perl module App::highlight, not "a universal sourcecode to formatted text converter." You'll also need Term::ANSIColor. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
mike@charron:~$ boss
00000000  54 50 35 84 2f cf 99 ea  3b e1 60 eb 08 f1 54 35  |TP5./...;.`...T5|
00000010  78 86 70 26 9e 24 f8 92  10 da 08 3c 63 10 49 32  |x.p&.$.....<c.I2|
00000020  40 e7 6d 2b e1 ef 6e ad  bf eb 4c 55 aa 41 f8 2e  |@.m+..n...LU.A..|
00000030  d3 2c ef 83 a7 85 de 3b  88 cd ff 7d f7 42 31 ed  |.,.....;...}.B1.|
00000040  77 be 21 4f a0 5a bd e7  a1 4e d6 73 2d 74 b0 be  |w.!O.Z...N.s-t..|
00000050  75 c6 6f 6e 38 ac 54 69  6f 00 51 95 ae 7d 13 d3  |u.on8.Tio.Q..}..|
00000060  d9 a4 2c 81 8a 07 38 55  b3 45 e3 62 97 2e 86 ca  |..,...8U.E.b....|
```
1

cat /dev/urandom | hexdump -C | highlight ca fe 3d 42 e1 b3 ae f8 | perl -MTime::HiRes -pne "Time::HiRes::usleep(rand()*1000000)"

doherty · 2010-12-29 21:26:18 6
lotto generator
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

seq -w 50 | sort -R | head -6 |fmt|tr " " "-"

metalx1000 · 2011-01-05 01:12:58 22
Perl One Liner to Generate a Random IP Address
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

perl -e 'printf "00:16:3E:%02X:%02X:%02X\n", rand 0xFF, rand 0xFF, rand 0xFF'

Gular · 2012-07-02 09:59:43 5
extracts 64 bytes of random digits from random lines out of /dev/random sent to stdio

Use this the next time you need to come up with a reasonably random bitstring, like for a WPA/WPA2 PSK or something. Takes a continuous stream of bytes coming from /dev/urandom, runs it through od(1), picking a random field ($0 and $1 excluded) from a random line and then prints it. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
afca515ee00c0c92637ee8d7a476f8a380b969cc43e205bb086e622f2b77ebdd
```
1

cat /dev/urandom|od -t x1|awk 'NR > line { pos=int(rand()*15)+2;printf("%s",$pos);line=NR+(rand()*1000);digits = digits+2 } digits == 64 { print("\n");exit }'

jetdillo · 2012-08-14 19:02:00 6
True Random Dice Roll
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

echo $(</dev/urandom tr -dc 1-6 | head -c1)

unixmonkey40000 · 2012-09-21 08:38:51 7
Generate a random text color in bash

The expression $(( $RANDOM * 6 / 32767 + 1 )) generates a random number between 1 and 6, which is then inserted into the escape sequence \e[3_m to switch the foreground color of the terminal to either red, green, yellow, blue, purple or cyan. The color can be reset using the escape sequence \e[0m. The full list of colors can be found here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt#List_of_colors_for_prompt_and_Bash
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

echo -e "\e[3$(( $RANDOM * 6 / 32767 + 1 ))mHello World!"

nst · 2013-07-28 13:01:12 10
Create a bunch of dummy text files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

for i in `seq 1 4096`; do tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c8192 > dummy$i.rnd; done

BoxingOctopus · 2013-11-11 21:27:15 8
Create a bunch of dummy text files

Using the 'time' command, running this with 'tr' took 28 seconds (and change) each time but using base64 only took 8 seconds (and change). If the file doesn't have to be viewable, pulling straight from urandom with head only took 6 seconds (and change)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

for i in {1..4096}; do base64 /dev/urandom | head -c 8192 > dummy$i.rnd ; done

pdxdoughnut · 2013-11-12 00:36:10 9
True random passwords using your microphone noise as seed

Generate a truly random password using noise from your microphone to seed the RNG. This will spit out 12 password with 12 characters each, but you can save this into a bash script and replace 'pwgen -ys 12 12' with 'pwgen $@' so you can pass any paramters to pwgen as you would normally do. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
;|T.x95E%ll= ci"9H?HMWv/8 ehdRq1cr-1\? (G+0R\F!!I4' *!bCB0;;9pBp uLO^29^j/[2j
y&o2Jd:zcuyh nEH`n./H"QD9 ,\?cahVpUC8" 8knd2Ko_MRX6 $NTRVDL]!55= TBBAI_4<')K*
```
1

TMPFILE="/tmp/$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM" && arecord -d 1 -t raw -f cd -q | base64 > $TMPFILE && pwgen -ys 12 12 -H $TMPFILE $@ && rm $TMPFILE

juliohm · 2014-06-09 16:28:41 7
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Simple addicting bash game.

Really bored during class so I made this... Basically, you hold period (or whatever) and hit enter after a second and you need to make the next line of periods the same length as the previous line... My record was 5 lines of the same length. It's best if you do it one handed with your pointer on period and ring on enter.

recursive search and replace old with new string, inside files

Using -Z with grep and -0 with xargs handles file names with spaces and special characters.

display the hover text of the most recent xkcd

I look at xkcd in my news reader, but it displays the image's title attribute only for a few seconds which makes reading the longer ones more challenging. So I use this to display it in my console.

Create an alias, store it in ~/.bash_aliases and source your new alias into the ~/.bashrc

This is useful if you use a shell with a lot of other users. You will be able to run "topu" to see your running processes instead of the complete 'top -u username'. Read more on alias: http://man.cx/alias

Update Ping.fm status

Updates your Ping.fm status and websites supported by ping.fm (like twitter, facebook, and google talk).

draw line separator (using knoppix5 idea)

This is a slightly modified version of the knoppix5 user oneliner (https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/24571/draw-line-separator).

Get list of servers with a specific port open

Change the -p argument for the port number. See "man nmap" for different ways to specify address ranges.

list block devices

Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

Greets the user appropriately

Remove apps with style: nuke it from orbit

You can't stand programs x, y, and z. Remove all trace of their existence by adding this function to your config. It will remove the cruft, the settings, and such and such. This function doesn't even give a damn about you trying to remove programs that don't exist: it'll just for loop to the next one on your hit list.

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Commands tagged random (101)

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