Is there a bash command for picking a random file?

adanedhel728 · 10-23-2008, 08:11 PM

This might sound like a strange question, but is there any bash command that I can use to pick a random file in a directory? For example, can I use it to play a random video file in the directory /home/andrew/Video by typing "totem /home/andrew/Video/[whatever the command may be]"?

Basically, what I'm wanting to do, and this may sound frivolous, is to use this with kalarm. I'm currently using kalarm with the command action, and I'm using the command "totem /home/andrew/Videos/**" and I have a different file for each day of the week so I wake up to a different video each morning. It would be great if I could just find a command that would select a random file in that directory, that would mean I'd have 1 alarm entry instead of 5, and it wouldn't repeat the same one every Monday, Tuesday, etc.

Thanks!
--Andrew

i92guboj · 10-23-2008, 09:22 PM

You can design your own, if would be something like this:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# Reads a given directory and picks a random file.

# The directory you want to use. You could use "$1" instead if you
# wanted to parametrize it.
DIR="$HOME/tmp"
# DIR="$1"

# Internal Field Separator set to newline, so file names with
# spaces do not break our script.
IFS='
'
 
if [[ -d "${DIR}" ]]
then
  # Runs ls on the given dir, and dumps the output into a matrix,
  # it uses the new lines character as a field delimiter, as explained above.
  file_matrix=($(ls "${DIR}"))
  num_files=${#file_matrix[*]}
  # This is the command you want to run on a random file.
  # Change "ls -l" by anything you want, it's just an example.
  ls -l "${DIR}/${file_matrix[$((RANDOM%num_files))]}"
fi

exit 0

As-is, the script will register the given directory, store all the files on that dir into an array, and then show the output of ls -l for a random file on that array. You can repeat it many times to see how it shows a different file each time.

I hope it's of any use.

Kenhelm · 10-23-2008, 09:48 PM

If you have the 'shuf' command, which is part of the GNU Core Utilities,
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutil...nvocation.html

Code:

cd /home/andrew/Videos; totem "$(ls | shuf -n1)"

adanedhel728 · 10-23-2008, 10:13 PM

Awesome, both of those suggestions work perfectly, and I got a good little introduction to scripting that might prove useful in the future

Thanks to both of you!
--Andrew

grumpf · 10-24-2008, 11:15 AM

what is about "mktemp" ?

i92guboj · 10-24-2008, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grumpf

what is about "mktemp" ?

On a first thought, mktemp is not related to the purpose of this thread. What do you mean?