From mikal@stillhq.com Fri Mar 29 10:26:04 2002
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:14:17 +1100 (EST)
From: Michael Still 
To: Linux user group 
Subject: Nemo's bash challenge for the day


Well, I said it could be done...

The brief: Generate a random number, and then return that element from a
list of elements, in bash

The code: (Assuming that the arguements on the command line are the
possible return options, and that the random number generator is running
as a separate script)

LOBOUND=0
HIBOUND=$#
shift $(( $LOBOUND + ($HIBOUND * $RANDOM) / (32767 + 1) ))
echo $1

See the attachments for some exploratory scripts I wrote while coming up
with this truncated sh. There are 54 lines of comments / white spaces, to
the 4 or so lines of actual code.

Have a nice life...

Cheers,
Mikal

PS: How good is the bash random? See the attachment output.count for a
summary of 100,000 numbers between 1 and 10 being generated with the
default seed. It's probably good enough for most people.

PPS: If you want the code, it should also be online at
http://www.stillhq.com/cgi-bin/getpage?area=bashrand&page=index.htm in
about 30 minutes, depending when Andrew goes to sleep.

-- 

Michael Still (mikal@stillhq.com)     UMT+11hrs

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