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.\" @(#)random.6 8.2 (Berkeley) 3/31/94 29.\" 30.Dd February 15, 2020 31.Dt RANDOM 6 32.Os 33.Sh NAME 34.Nm random 35.Nd random lines from a file or random numbers 36.Sh SYNOPSIS 37.Nm 38.Op Fl elrUuw 39.Op Fl f Ar filename 40.Op Ar denominator 41.Sh DESCRIPTION 42.Nm Random 43has two distinct modes of operations. 44The default is to read lines from standard input and write them to standard 45output with a probability of 1.0 / 46.Ar denominator . 47.Ar ( denominator 48is a real number greater than or equal to 1.0.) 49The default 50.Ar denominator 51for this mode of operation is 2.0, giving each line a 50% chance of 52being displayed. 53.Pp 54The second mode of operation, selected with the 55.Fl f Ar filename 56option, reads the specified file and outputs the randomized contents to 57standard output. 58The contents can be randomized in units of lines (split on newline characters) 59or in units of words (split on space characters as determined by 60.Xr isspace 3 . ) 61The default 62.Ar denominator 63for this mode of operation is 1.0, which displays every line. 64.Pp 65The options are as follows: 66.Bl -tag -width Ds 67.It Fl e 68If the 69.Fl e 70option is specified, 71.Nm 72does not read or write anything, and simply exits with a random 73exit value of 0 to 74.Ar denominator 75\&- 1, inclusive. 76In this mode, 77.Ar denominator 78must be less than or equal to 256. 79.It Fl f Ar filename 80The 81.Fl f 82option is used to specify the 83.Ar filename 84to read from. 85Standard input is used if 86.Ar filename 87is 88.Sq - . 89.It Fl l 90Randomize the input via newlines (the default). 91.It Fl r 92Do not buffer output. 93.It Fl U 94Reuse any given line or word when creating a randomized output. 95.It Fl u 96Do not select the same line or word from a file more than once (the default). 97This does not guarantee uniqueness if there are two of the 98same tokens in the input. 99.It Fl w 100Randomize words separated by 101.Xr isspace 3 102instead of newlines. 103.El 104.Sh SEE ALSO 105.Xr fortune 6 106.Sh HISTORY 107The 108functionality to randomizing lines and words was added in 2003 by 109.An Sean Chittenden Aq Mt seanc@FreeBSD.org . 110.Sh BUGS 111This tool is a remnant of the "games" collection formerly part of 112.Fx 113base. 114It probably should have been removed to ports with the rest of that collection. 115It does not have a coherent purpose and the motivation for it to be a core base 116utility is nonobvious. 117.Pp 118No index is used when printing out tokens from the list which 119makes it rather slow for large files (10MB+). 120