The Shuf command is used to generate random permutations in Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Using shuf command, we can shuffle the lines of a given input file randomly. Shuf command is part of GNU Coreutils, so you don't have bother with installation. In this brief tutorial, let me show you some examples of shuf command.
The Shuf Command Tutorial with Examples
I have a file named ostechnix.txt with the following contents.
$ cat ostechnix.txt line1 line2 line3 line4 line5 line6 line7 line8 line9 line10
Now let us display the above lines in a random order. To do so, run:
$ shuf ostechnix.txt line2 line8 line5 line10 line7 line1 line4 line6 line9 line3
See? The above command randomized the order of lines in the file named "ostechnix.txt" and output the result.
You might want to write the output to another file. For example, I want to save the output in a file named output.txt. To do so, first create output.txt file:
$ touch output.txt
Then, write the output to that file using -o flag like below.
$ shuf ostechnix.txt -o output.txt
The above command will shuffle the contents of ostechnix.txt file randomly and write the output to output.txt file. You can view the output.txt file contents using command:
$ cat output.txt line2 line8 line9 line10 line1 line3 line7 line6 line4 line5
I just want to display any one of the random line from the file. How can I do it? Simple!
$ shuf -n 1 ostechnix.txt line6
Similarly, we can pick the first "n" random entries. The following command will display the only the first five random entries.
$ shuf -n 5 ostechnix.txt line10 line4 line5 line9 line3
Instead of reading the lines from a file, we can directly pass the inputs using -e flag like below.
$ shuf -e line1 line2 line3 line4 line5 line1 line3 line5 line4 line2
You can pass shuffle the numbers too:
$ shuf -e 1 2 3 4 5 3 5 1 4 2
To quickly pick any one from the given range, use this command instead.
$ shuf -n 1 -e 1 2 3 4 5
Or, pick any three random numbers like below.
$ shuf -n 3 -e 1 2 3 4 5 3 5 1
We can also generate random numbers within a particular range. For example, to display random numbers between 1 to 10, simply use:
$ shuf -i 1-10 1 9 8 2 4 7 6 3 10 5
For more details, refer man pages.
$ man shuf
