Randomise reads input of arbitrary length and returns a pseudo-randomly selected line. The file can be of arbitrary length as at most two lines are stored in memory at any given time. Lines are a maximum of 4096 characters long, this can be configured at compile time. Randomise is particularly useful from selecting elements from lists that are too long to be accepted on a single command line.
The following example pseudo-randomly chooses a file stored under /usr/man and echos the name to stdout.
find /usr/man -type f | randomise
To view a pseudo-randomly selected manual page from under /usr/man the following command could be used under the bash(1) shell.
nroff -man $(find /usr/man -type f | randomise)
Randomise is currently available as a tar ball and in RPM format. The FTP site is ftp://ftp.vergenet.net/pub/randomise/. A mirror site is provided at ftp://ftp.au.vergenet.net/pub/randomise/.
15th April 2000 0.0.0 released.