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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"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
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In reply to Re: random file selection by BrowserUk
in thread random file selection by Anonymous Monk

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