I think this method is accurate and fair: 
open my $some_filehandle, "<", "quotefile.txt";
my $set_size = 3;

my $set = random_set_of_n($some_filehandle, $set_size);


sub random_set_of_n {
  my ($fh, $size) = @_;
  my @set;

  local ($., $_);
  seek $fh, 0, 0;
  while (<$fh>) { chomp; push @set, $_; last if @set == $size; }
  # XXX: @set *should* be shuffled now if you care about ordering
  while (<$fh>) { chomp; $set[rand @set] = $_ if $size/$. > rand; }
  return \@set;
}

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I think it's a fair distribution. My tests imply it is. Update: the set should be shuffled where I've indicated. It's not necessary if you're going to be plucking elements from it at random later on, though, only if you want a randomly ordered list returned.
Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

In reply to Re: grabbing random n rows from a file by japhy
in thread grabbing random n rows from a file by punkish

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