Java's Collections.shuffle is doing what?

Solution 1:

Yes, you can look at the code; it basically does a Fisher-Yates shuffle. Here it is (thanks OpenJDK, and yay for open source :-P):

public static void shuffle(List<?> list, Random rnd) {
    int size = list.size();
    if (size < SHUFFLE_THRESHOLD || list instanceof RandomAccess) {
        for (int i=size; i>1; i--)
            swap(list, i-1, rnd.nextInt(i));
    } else {
        Object arr[] = list.toArray();

        // Shuffle array
        for (int i=size; i>1; i--)
            swap(arr, i-1, rnd.nextInt(i));

        // Dump array back into list
        ListIterator it = list.listIterator();
        for (int i=0; i<arr.length; i++) {
            it.next();
            it.set(arr[i]);
        }
    }
}

The swap method:

 private static void swap(Object[] x, int a, int b) {
    Object t = x[a];
    x[a] = x[b];
    x[b] = t;
}

Solution 2:

The Collections JavaDoc gives some information on the shuffle method used.

This implementation traverses the list backwards, from the last element up to the second, repeatedly swapping a randomly selected element into the "current position". Elements are randomly selected from the portion of the list that runs from the first element to the current position, inclusive.

So it starts at the end and walks the list backwards. At each element it stops and swaps the current element with a preceding element from the list. The "default source of randomness" in this case is probably a Random object created with a default seed.