06257a71aa
And document it in the manual page. PR: 244139 Submitted by: Keith White <kwhite AT site.uottawa.ca> (earlier version)
121 lines
3.9 KiB
Groff
121 lines
3.9 KiB
Groff
.\" Copyright (c) 1994
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.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
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.\"
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.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\" are met:
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.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
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.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
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.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
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.\" without specific prior written permission.
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.\"
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.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
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.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
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.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
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.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
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.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
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.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
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.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
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.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
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.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
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.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
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.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
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.\"
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.\" @(#)random.6 8.2 (Berkeley) 3/31/94
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.\" $FreeBSD$
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.\"
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.Dd February 15, 2020
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.Dt RANDOM 6
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.Os
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.Sh NAME
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.Nm random
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.Nd random lines from a file or random numbers
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.Sh SYNOPSIS
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.Nm
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.Op Fl elrUuw
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.Op Fl f Ar filename
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.Op Ar denominator
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.Sh DESCRIPTION
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.Nm Random
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has two distinct modes of operations.
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The default is to read lines from standard input and write them to standard
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output with a probability of 1.0 /
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.Ar denominator .
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.Ar ( denominator
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is a real number greater than or equal to 1.0.)
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The default
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.Ar denominator
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for this mode of operation is 2.0, giving each line a 50% chance of
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being displayed.
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.Pp
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The second mode of operation, selected with the
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.Fl f Ar filename
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option, reads the specified file and outputs the randomized contents to
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standard output.
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The contents can be randomized in units of lines (split on newline characters)
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or in units of words (split on space characters as determined by
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.Xr isspace 3 . )
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The default
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.Ar denominator
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for this mode of operation is 1.0, which displays every line.
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.Pp
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The options are as follows:
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.Bl -tag -width Ds
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.It Fl e
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If the
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.Fl e
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option is specified,
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.Nm
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does not read or write anything, and simply exits with a random
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exit value of 0 to
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.Ar denominator
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\&- 1, inclusive.
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In this mode,
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.Ar denominator
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must be less than or equal to 256.
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.It Fl f Ar filename
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The
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.Fl f
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option is used to specify the
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.Ar filename
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to read from.
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Standard input is used if
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.Ar filename
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is
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.Sq - .
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.It Fl l
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Randomize the input via newlines (the default).
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.It Fl r
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Do not buffer output.
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.It Fl U
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Reuse any given line or word when creating a randomized output.
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.It Fl u
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Do not select the same line or word from a file more than once (the default).
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This does not guarantee uniqueness if there are two of the
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same tokens in the input.
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.It Fl w
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Randomize words separated by
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.Xr isspace 3
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instead of newlines.
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.El
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.Sh SEE ALSO
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.Xr fortune 6
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.Sh HISTORY
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The
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functionality to randomizing lines and words was added in 2003 by
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.An Sean Chittenden Aq Mt seanc@FreeBSD.org .
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.Sh BUGS
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This tool is a remnant of the "games" collection formerly part of
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.Fx
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base.
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It probably should have been removed to ports with the rest of that collection.
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It does not have a coherent purpose and the motivation for it to be a core base
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utility is nonobvious.
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.Pp
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No index is used when printing out tokens from the list which
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makes it rather slow for large files (10MB+).
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