1.\" Copyright (c) 1994 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 13.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 14.\" without specific prior written permission. 15.\" 16.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 17.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 18.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 19.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 20.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 21.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 22.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 23.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 24.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 25.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 26.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 27.\" 28.Dd February 15, 2020 29.Dt RANDOM 6 30.Os 31.Sh NAME 32.Nm random 33.Nd random lines from a file or random numbers 34.Sh SYNOPSIS 35.Nm 36.Op Fl elrUuw 37.Op Fl f Ar filename 38.Op Ar denominator 39.Sh DESCRIPTION 40.Nm Random 41has two distinct modes of operations. 42The default is to read lines from standard input and write them to standard 43output with a probability of 1.0 / 44.Ar denominator . 45.Ar ( denominator 46is a real number greater than or equal to 1.0.) 47The default 48.Ar denominator 49for this mode of operation is 2.0, giving each line a 50% chance of 50being displayed. 51.Pp 52The second mode of operation, selected with the 53.Fl f Ar filename 54option, reads the specified file and outputs the randomized contents to 55standard output. 56The contents can be randomized in units of lines (split on newline characters) 57or in units of words (split on space characters as determined by 58.Xr isspace 3 . ) 59The default 60.Ar denominator 61for this mode of operation is 1.0, which displays every line. 62.Pp 63The options are as follows: 64.Bl -tag -width Ds 65.It Fl e 66If the 67.Fl e 68option is specified, 69.Nm 70does not read or write anything, and simply exits with a random 71exit value of 0 to 72.Ar denominator 73\&- 1, inclusive. 74In this mode, 75.Ar denominator 76must be less than or equal to 256. 77.It Fl f Ar filename 78The 79.Fl f 80option is used to specify the 81.Ar filename 82to read from. 83Standard input is used if 84.Ar filename 85is 86.Sq - . 87.It Fl l 88Randomize the input via newlines (the default). 89.It Fl r 90Do not buffer output. 91.It Fl U 92Reuse any given line or word when creating a randomized output. 93.It Fl u 94Do not select the same line or word from a file more than once (the default). 95This does not guarantee uniqueness if there are two of the 96same tokens in the input. 97.It Fl w 98Randomize words separated by 99.Xr isspace 3 100instead of newlines. 101.El 102.Sh SEE ALSO 103.Xr fortune 6 104.Sh HISTORY 105The 106functionality to randomizing lines and words was added in 2003 by 107.An Sean Chittenden Aq Mt seanc@FreeBSD.org . 108.Sh BUGS 109This tool is a remnant of the "games" collection formerly part of 110.Fx 111base. 112It probably should have been removed to ports with the rest of that collection. 113It does not have a coherent purpose and the motivation for it to be a core base 114utility is nonobvious. 115.Pp 116No index is used when printing out tokens from the list which 117makes it rather slow for large files (10MB+). 118