Hi, this is Sandra Henry-Stocker, author of the “Unix as a Second Language” blog on NetworkWorld.
In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at the shuf command — short for “shuffle”. It randomly rearranges lines from a file or output that is sent to it. For example, if you wanted to rearrange the contents of a file every time you looked at it, you could do this:
Notice how every time we do this, the colors are in a different order. To sort the output from a command, do something like this:
The output should be fairly random, especially if the file that you’re shuffling is fairly long.
That’s your Linux tip for the shuf command.
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