RAND(1) BSD General Commands Manual RAND(1)NAMErand — randomize the order of a stream
SYNOPSISrand [-lwvh] [-f <input file>] [-o <output file>] [--help] [--version]
DESCRIPTIONrand has 2 major modes of operation. The first is as a pipe. The second
is to act on a specified file. There are 2 minor modes of operation, the
data can be randomized by line or word.
As a pipe, rand collects the stream until it terminates, then displays
the randomized results of this completed stream. If the stream is the
result of several operations, then the stream as a whole is randomized.
When operating on a file, rand will read the input from a single given
file, and display the results to stdout.
The two command line parameters control if the randomization is per line
or word. The default behavior is to randomize by line. rand will ran‐
domize by word, and return one word on every line. A word in this sense
is any string delimited by a whitespace. Tabs, spaces, and newlines are
ignored.
OPTIONS
[-l] Line shuffle
[-w] Word shuffle
[-c] Character shuffle
[-v, --version]
Show version and exit.
[-h, --help]
Show help and exit.
[-f <file>]
Read from <file> instead of stdin.
[-<file>]
Write to <file> instead of stdout.
EXAMPLES
play `find -name *.wav | rand `
rand-w -f COPYING -o whatever
rand-l -f history.test -o test.1
/bin/ls | rand-w
DIAGNOSTICSrand returns EXIT_SUCCESS on success or EXIT_FAILURE on failure. The
only cases where EXIT_FAILURE may be returned are
· -f file can not be read.
· -o file cannot be written to.
· An unknown option is presented (in which case, usage is also printed)
SEE ALSOsort(1), rand(3)HISTORYrand was created in October of 1998 when Erik Greenwald got tired of
hacking things to shuffle stuff.
BUGSrand has no known bugs. Please report any to <erik@brlcad.org>
AUTHOR
Erik Greenwald <erik@brlcad.org> <erik@brlcad.org>
December 11, 1998
