How can I print the lines in STDIN in random order in Perl?

Question

I want to do the inverse of sort(1) : randomize every line of stdin to stdout in Perl.

Answer 1

This perl snippet does the trick :

#! /usr/bin/perl
# randomize cat

# fisher_yates_shuffle code copied from Perl Cookbook 
# (By Tom Christiansen & Nathan Torkington; ISBN 1-56592-243-3)

use strict;

my @lines = <>;
fisher_yates_shuffle( \@lines );    # permutes @array in place
foreach my $line (@lines) {
    print $line;
}

# fisher_yates_shuffle( \@array ) : generate a random permutation
# of @array in place
sub fisher_yates_shuffle {
    my $array = shift;
    my $i;
    for ($i = @$array; --$i; ) {
        my $j = int rand ($i+1);
        next if $i == $j;
        @$array[$i,$j] = @$array[$j,$i];
    }
}

__END__