As japhy suggests, the Fisher-Yates shuffle is a good solution. If you want to save yourself the trouble of coding it, I've got it implemented in Math::NumberCruncher. Math::NumberCruncher also has numerous other similar functions that may be useful. Using Math::NumberCruncher, you could do the above like so:
use strict;
use Math::NumberCruncher;
my @chars = ( 'A' .. 'Z' );
my $ref = Math::NumberCruncher->new();
$ref->ShuffleArray( \@chars );
foreach my $char ( @chars ) {
print $char, "\n";
}
UPDATE:
Pursuant to Juerd's post, in the interest of TMTOWTDI, here's the code using Math::NumberCruncher through its original functional interface:
use strict;
use Math::NumberCruncher;
my @chars = ( 'A' .. 'Z' );
Math::NumberCruncher::ShuffleArray( \@chars );
foreach my $char ( @chars ) {
print $char, "\n";
}
___________________
Kurt
-
Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
-
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
-
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
-
Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.
|