How can I randomize the lines in a file using standard tools on Red Hat Linux?
And a Perl one-liner you get!
perl -MList::Util -e 'print List::Util::shuffle <>'It uses a module, but the module is part of the Perl code distribution. If that's not good enough, you may consider rolling your own.
I tried using this with the -i flag ("edit-in-place") to have it edit the file. The documentation suggests it should work, but it doesn't. It still displays the shuffled file to stdout, but this time it deletes the original. I suggest you don't use it.
Consider a shell script:
#!/bin/shif [[ $# -eq 0 ]]then echo "Usage: $0 [file ...]" exit 1fifor i in "$@"do perl -MList::Util -e 'print List::Util::shuffle <>' $i > $i.new if [[ `wc -c $i` -eq `wc -c $i.new` ]] then mv $i.new $i else echo "Error for file $i!" fidoneUntested, but hopefully works.