use strict;
use warnings;

my $dir = shift || '.';

my @rand;
while (<$dir/*>) {
   push @rand,$_ if int rand 2 and -f $_;
}

print $_,$/ for @rand;
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perl -le'$d=shift||".";print for grep{int rand 2 and -f $_}<$d/*>'
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jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

If you need to select a subset of a specified size, then you could do something like this. (Note: You probably don't need the glob if your on *nix.

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use vars qw[$N];

$N ||= 30;

die 'No path specified' unless @ARGV;

my @files = glob $ARGV[0];

my $r;
$r = rand(@files) and @files[$_,$r] = @files[$r,$_] for 0 .. $N;
splice @files, $N;

print for @files;
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I get the 'no path specified' error for this program. I ran the program within the directory that contains the files I wish to randomly extract. I believe that this program is closest to what I am wanting.

Sorry. I guess I should have added a usage line.

scriptname [-N=number of files] path\*.ext

Eg. script -N=10 *.pl will print the names of 30 .pl files from the current directory.

script "c:\My Files\*" will print the names 30 files of any type from the specified directory.

You might need to play with it a bit to make it work under *nix.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller

Note: You probably don't need the glob if your on *nix.

Yes, this is true. Instead of my @files = glob $ARGV[0];, it would be my @files = @ARGV; (or one could simply use @ARGV directly). The reason for this is most unix shells expand globs before perl even gets the command line.

!/usr/bin/perl -wd

use IO::Dir;

tie %dir, IO::Dir, ".";
@files = grep { -f } keys %dir;
fisher_yates_shuffle( \@files );

print $files[$_],"\n" for 0 .. 5;

# right from the faq
sub fisher_yates_shuffle {
    my $deck = shift;  # $deck is a reference to an array
    my $i = @$deck;
    while ($i--) {
        my $j = int rand ($i+1);
        @$deck[$i,$j] = @$deck[$j,$i];
    }
}
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or

!/usr/bin/perl -wd

use IO::Dir;
use List::Util 'shuffle';

tie %dir, IO::Dir, ".";
@files = grep { -f } keys %dir;

@shuff = shuffle(@files);
print $shuff[$_],"\n" for 0 .. 5;
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-derby

The code at the bottom of this post seems to work nicely. Except that it only works with .pl files in the directory. Why?

because the others are directories? The -f portion of the snippet extracts only the plaintext files from the list (see perlfunc:_X). Without a listing from the target directory, I cannot be more specific.

-derby

opendir( DIR, "." ) || die "Can't open DIRHANDLE, stopped";
-f $_ and !/^\./ and push @entry, "$_" while ($_ = readdir(DIR));
closedir( DIR );
@entry[-$i,$j] = @entry[$j,-$i] while $j = rand(@entry - $i), ++$i < @
+entry;
map { print $_ . "\n" } @entry[0 .. ( shift || 1 ) - 1];
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