Random shuffling of an array
I need to randomly shuffle the following Array:
int[] solutionArray = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1};
Is there any function to do that?
Solution 1:
Using Collections to shuffle an array of primitive types is a bit of an overkill...
It is simple enough to implement the function yourself, using for example the Fisher–Yates shuffle:
import java.util.*;
import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom;
class Test
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
int[] solutionArray = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11 };
shuffleArray(solutionArray);
for (int i = 0; i < solutionArray.length; i++)
{
System.out.print(solutionArray[i] + " ");
}
System.out.println();
}
// Implementing Fisher–Yates shuffle
static void shuffleArray(int[] ar)
{
// If running on Java 6 or older, use `new Random()` on RHS here
Random rnd = ThreadLocalRandom.current();
for (int i = ar.length - 1; i > 0; i--)
{
int index = rnd.nextInt(i + 1);
// Simple swap
int a = ar[index];
ar[index] = ar[i];
ar[i] = a;
}
}
}
Solution 2:
Here is a simple way using an ArrayList
:
List<Integer> solution = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 1; i <= 6; i++) {
solution.add(i);
}
Collections.shuffle(solution);
Solution 3:
Here is a working and efficient Fisher–Yates shuffle array function:
private static void shuffleArray(int[] array)
{
int index;
Random random = new Random();
for (int i = array.length - 1; i > 0; i--)
{
index = random.nextInt(i + 1);
if (index != i)
{
array[index] ^= array[i];
array[i] ^= array[index];
array[index] ^= array[i];
}
}
}
or
private static void shuffleArray(int[] array)
{
int index, temp;
Random random = new Random();
for (int i = array.length - 1; i > 0; i--)
{
index = random.nextInt(i + 1);
temp = array[index];
array[index] = array[i];
array[i] = temp;
}
}
Solution 4:
Collections class has an efficient method for shuffling, that can be copied, so as not to depend on it:
/**
* Usage:
* int[] array = {1, 2, 3};
* Util.shuffle(array);
*/
public class Util {
private static Random random;
/**
* Code from method java.util.Collections.shuffle();
*/
public static void shuffle(int[] array) {
if (random == null) random = new Random();
int count = array.length;
for (int i = count; i > 1; i--) {
swap(array, i - 1, random.nextInt(i));
}
}
private static void swap(int[] array, int i, int j) {
int temp = array[i];
array[i] = array[j];
array[j] = temp;
}
}