How about creating an array with 0..Number_Of_Lines_In_File, using Algorithm::Numerical::Shuffle to randomize, then taking the first 'n' slots as the indexes to the question? (Ask one of the math geeks about perhaps creating a random list of 0..$Max_Questions, and using that to select from the shuffled list. It *may* improve that randomicity. I dunno.)

This one particular run seems weighted to lower values, but a purely visual guess of subsequent runs appears to have moderately even distributions over the range.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Algorithm::Numerical::Shuffle qw(shuffle);

srand();

my @array1=();
my $Max_Questions = 30;  #Will vary upon how many questions
                         #the person wants to answer

my $ref = random(\@array1,$Max_Questions);

sub random{
  my $array = shift;
  my $Max = shift;
  my $lines = 100;  #There is a function that gets the
                    #number of lines in the actual data
                    #file, but there will be at least 100.
  @$array = (shuffle (0..$lines))[0..$Max_Questions];
   
  my @sorted = sort {$a<=>$b} @$array;
  print"Element\t\tUnsorted\tSorted\n";
  print"-------\t\t--------\t------\n";

  for(my $z = 0;$z<$Max;$z++){
    print"   $z";
    print"\t\t    @$array[$z]\t\t";
    print"   $sorted[$z]\n";
  }
}

[download]
Element         Unsorted        Sorted
-------         --------        ------
   0                30             0
   1                48             1
   2                70             3
   3                55             4
   4                3              6
   5                23             8
   6                45             10
   7                1              21
   8                33             22
   9                31             23
   10               28             26
   11               0              27
   12               97             28
   13               6              30
   14               91             31
   15               10             33
   16               22             36
   17               36             42
   18               26             43
   19               43             45
   20               69             48
   21               27             50
   22               59             55
   23               8              59
   24               72             65
   25               65             69
   26               94             70
   27               42             72
   28               50             91
   29               4              94

[download]
--Chris

e-mail jcwren

In reply to (jcwren) Re: Creating an array of unique numbers by jcwren
in thread Creating an array of unique numbers by TStanley

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