shuf
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	coreutils: GNU GPL v3

shuf is a command-line utility included in the textutils package of GNU Core Utilities for creating a standard output consisting of random permutations of the input.

The version of shuf bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Paul Eggert. It is not a part of POSIX.^[1]

Example

$ ls
Wikibooks  Wikipedia  Wiktionary
$ # Shuffles input 
$ ls | shuf 
Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Wikibooks
$ # Picks one random line from input
$ ls | shuf -n1
Wikipedia

References

^ shuf(1) – Linux General Commands Manual

v t e Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins
File system	cat chattr chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask
Processes	at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time
User environment	env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write
Text processing	awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf read sed sort strings tail tr troff uniq vi wc xargs
Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait
Searching	find grep
Documentation	man
Software development	ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal expr lp od sleep true and false
Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List

v t e GNU Core Utilities command-line interface programs
File system	chcon chmod chown chgrp cksum cp dd df dir dircolors install ln ls mkdir mkfifo mknod mktemp mv realpath rm rmdir shred sync touch truncate vdir
Text utilities	b2sum base32 base64 cat cksum comm csplit cut expand fmt fold head join md5sum nl numfmt od paste ptx pr sha1sum shuf sort split sum tac tail tr tsort unexpand uniq wc
Shell utilities	arch basename chroot date dirname du echo env expr factor false groups hostid id link logname nice nohup nproc pathchk pinky printenv printf pwd readlink runcon seq sleep stat stdbuf stty tee test timeout true tty uname unlink uptime users who whoami yes

Example

See also

References