Install shuf on OS X?

command-line

Ubuntu Linux has a great tool called shuf, which works like head except that it gives you ten random lines. I couldn't find it on Homebrew. What is the simplest way of installing it on OS X?

Solution 1:

You can install coreutils with brew install coreutils.

shuf will be linked as gshuf. Read the caveats when you install coreutils.

Solution 2:

Yet another solution is to learn about the tools supplied by the vendor. Certainly you could chain jot, paste, sort, cut, head and get the same results.

jot -r "$(wc -l FILE)" 1 |
paste - FILE |
sort -n |
cut -f 2- |
head -n 10

jot produces a random number from 1 to the number of lines in FILE for each line
paste pastes the random number to each line in FILE
sort sorts numeric each line
cut removes the random number from each line
head outputs the first 10 lines

Solution 3:

You can install coreutils with Macports as

sudo port install coreutils

This will put GNU core utils in /opt/local/bin with a g prepended

e.g. gshuf

More details on the package coreutils.

Solution 4:

Another option is to install randomize-lines(homebrew) package, which has an rl command which has similar functionality to shuf.

Usage: rl [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Randomize the lines of a file (or stdin).

  -c, --count=N  select N lines from the file
  -r, --reselect lines may be selected multiple times
  -o, --output=FILE
                 send output to file
  -d, --delimiter=DELIM
                 specify line delimiter (one character)
  -0, --null     set line delimiter to null character
                 (useful with find -print0)
  -n, --line-number
                 print line number with output lines
  -q, --quiet, --silent
                 do not output any errors or warnings
  -h, --help     display this help and exit
  -V, --version  output version information and exit

Solution 5:

You can use sort -R

$ seq 5 | sort -R
2
3
4
1
5