How do I pick a random line from a file?

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vroom has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: ⭐ (files)

How do I pick a random line from a file?

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Comment on How do I pick a random line from a file?

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Re: How do I pick a random line from a file?⭐ by vroom (His Eminence) on Jan 09, 2000 at 10:38 UTC
This solution while not the most obvious is probably the best because it doesn't require you to store the entire file in memory. Instead it reads in each line and chooses whether or not that line will be stored as the random line. $. is a special variable that stores the current line number you are on starting with 1. To show that this works we'll walk through an example reading line 1 to 3. `1. read line 1 2. rand(1)<1 #100% chance it's true if we had just one line 3. read line 2 4. rand(2)<1 #50% chance that line 2 replaces line 1 as the random +line. 5. read line 3 6. rand(3)<1 #1/3 chance that line 3 replaces the currently chosen +line` [download] `srand; open FILE, "<filename" or die "Could not open filename: $!\n"; rand($.)<1 and ($line=$_) while <FILE>; close FILE; print "Random line is $line\n";` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How do I pick a random line from a file?⭐ by Crulx (Monk) on Jan 21, 2000 at 05:06 UTC
More cryptically `srand; rand($.) < 1 && ($it = $_) while <>;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How do I pick a random line from a file?⭐ by rob_au (Abbot) on Dec 01, 2001 at 16:19 UTC
From Programming Perl (1st Ed) written by Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz ... `perl -e 'srand;' \ -e 'rand($.) < 1 && ($it = $_) while <>;' \ -e 'print $it' FILE` [download] This procedure selects a line at random from a file, using just one pass over the file and without knowing in advance the number of lines. It works by calculating the probability that the current line (indicated by the `$.` variable) would be selected if this line were the last line in the file. The first line is selected with a probability of 100%, but the second line has a 50% chance of replacing the first one, the third line a 33% chance of replacing one of the first two, and so on.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How do I pick a random line from a file? by vroom (His Eminence) on Jan 09, 2000 at 11:00 UTC
Another more obvious way, but possibly memory intensive way would be to read the entire file into an array and then pick a random element. `open FILE, "<$file" or die "Could not open $file: $!\n"; @array=<FILE>; close FILE; $randomline=$array[rand @array];` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How do I pick a random line from a file? by scain (Curate) on Nov 30, 2001 at 21:53 UTC
I realize this is not at all portable, but one could use the `wc -l` *nix command to get the total number of lines, pick from that number randomly, then open the file and `while` until you get to that line. You could even use File::ReadBackwards if the random line is in the second half of the file. Come to think of it, if you are already willing to use wc, you could also use tail and head thusly: $line = `tail +N \| head -1 $file. Ugly, I know. It also opens all kinds of ugly security holes if $file comes from an untrustworthy source.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How do I pick a random line from a file? by Anonymous Monk on Feb 12, 2000 at 01:13 UTC
This one only works in UNIX boxen: $n = int rand `wc -l $file`; do { $l = $_ if $. == $n } while <>; [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How do I pick a random line from a file? by Anonymous Monk on Nov 30, 2001 at 08:23 UTC
I found what I want. Appreciate for the information. :) Originally posted as a Categorized Answer.	[reply]

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