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Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

Terminal - Selecting a random file/folder of a folder
shuf -n1 -e *
2011-03-23 03:52:56
User: seungwon
8
Up
Down
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

I used only shuf command.

Show sample output | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
ls -1 | shuf -n 1
2011-03-13 22:14:57
User: quincymd
Functions: ls
Tags: bash random
2
Up
Down
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

random file from files in directory

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
find . | shuf -n1
2011-04-01 22:57:01
User: unixmonkey8119
Functions: find
Tags: bash random
1
Up
Down
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

Also looks in subfolders

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
a=(*); echo ${a[$((RANDOM % ${#a[@]}))]}
2011-03-18 13:24:52
User: putnamhill
Functions: echo
Tags: bash random
-1
Up
Down
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

Here's a bash version using an array.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
for i in *; do echo "$i"; done | shuf -n1
2011-03-17 17:48:42
User: johnraff
Functions: echo
Tags: bash random
-2
Up
Down
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

Choose random file from current folder. Avoids using ls.

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
ls -1 | awk 'BEGIN{srand()} {x[NR] = $0} END{print "Selected", x[1 + int(rand() * NR)]}'
2011-03-13 20:05:06
User: saibbot
Functions: awk ls
Tags: awk random
-3
Up
Down
Selecting a random file/folder of a folder

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

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

Nice. Got to be the most concise so far.

Comment by quincymd 112 weeks and 5 days ago

Brilliant! I was doing: find . -maxdepth 1|sort -R|head -n1

much much better your way!

Comment by j_melis 112 weeks and 4 days ago

Wow! That's why they say to read the manual... Very nice.

Comment by johnraff 112 weeks and 3 days ago

Can someone explain to me why this is useful?

Any use case?

Comment by Neo23x0 112 weeks ago

This is a nice use of the "-e" but be careful that you know the max number of files in the directory. You can get a "Argument list too long" error with this one. The alternative #8090 works even with a large number of files:

ls|shuf -n1

and it's actually shorter if you remove the superfluous "-1" on the ls, as noted in the comments. I was surprised to find the version with the pipe was faster on my system starting at about 4000 files.

Comment by splante 71 weeks and 5 days ago

Your point of view

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