Best way to choose a random file from a directory in a shell script

jhs_2938 0
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What is the best way to choose a random file from a directory in a shell script?

Here is my solution in Bash but I would be very interested for a more portable (non-GNU) version for use on Unix proper.

dir='some/directory'
file=`/bin/ls -1 "$dir" | sort --random-sort | head -1`
path=`readlink --canonicalize "$dir/$file"` # Converts to full path
echo "The randomly-selected file is: $path"

Anybody have any other ideas?

Edit: lhunath makes a good point about parsing ls. I guess it comes down to whether you want to be portable or not. If you have the GNU findutils and coreutils then you can do:

find "$dir" -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type f -print0 \
  | sort --zero-terminated --random-sort \
  | sed 's/\d000.*//g/'

Whew, that was fun! Also it matches my question better since I said "random file". Honsetly though, these days it's hard to imagine a Unix system deployed out there having GNU installed but not Perl 5.

random shell file bash
11 Answers
files=(/my/dir/*)
printf "%s\n" "${files[RANDOM % ${#files[@]}]}"

And don't parse ls. Read http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

Edit: Good luck finding a non-bash solution that's reliable. Most will break for certain types of filenames, such as filenames with spaces or newlines or dashes (it's pretty much impossible in pure sh). To do it right without bash, you'd need to fully migrate to awk/perl/python/... without piping that output for further processing or such.

user_588030

Something like: 

let x="$RANDOM % ${#file}"
echo "The randomly-selected file is ${path[$x]}"

$RANDOM in bash is a special variable that returns a random number, then I use modulus division to get a valid index, then reference that index in the array.

MGoDave_848420

This boils down to: How can I create a random number in a Unix script in a portable way?

Because if you have a random number between 1 and N, you can use head -$N | tail to cut somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, I know no portable way to do this with the shell alone. If you have Python or Perl, you can easily use their random support but AFAIK, there is no standard rand(1) command.

Aaron_Digulla_340880

I think Awk is a good tool to get a random number. According to the Advanced Bash Guide, Awk is a good random number replacement for $RANDOM.

Here's a version of your script that avoids Bash-isms and GNU tools.

#! /bin/sh

dir='some/directory'
n_files=`/bin/ls -1 "$dir" | wc -l | cut -f1`
rand_num=`awk "BEGIN{srand();print int($n_files * rand()) + 1;}"`
file=`/bin/ls -1 "$dir" | sed -ne "${rand_num}p"`
path=`cd $dir && echo "$PWD/$file"` # Converts to full path.  
echo "The randomly-selected file is: $path"

It inherits the problems other answers have mentioned should files contain newlines.

user_734490

My 2 cents, with a version that should not break when filenames with special chars exist:

#!/bin/bash --
dir='some/directory'

let number_of_files=$(find "${dir}" -type f -print0 | grep -zc .)
let rand_index=$((1+(RANDOM % number_of_files)))

printf "the randomly-selected file is: "
find "${dir}" -type f -print0 | head -z -n "${rand_index}" | tail -z -n 1
printf "\n"
user_60103430
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