2014-06-26 16:48:13 +00:00
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---
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layout: post
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title: "Inverse of `sort`"
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2016-02-26 15:19:42 +00:00
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date: 2011-09-18T14:57:31Z
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2014-06-26 16:48:13 +00:00
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tags: [linux, command-line]
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permalink: /blog/2011/9/18/inverse-of-sort
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published: true
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author:
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name: Gergely Polonkai
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email: gergely@polonkai.eu
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---
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I’m using \*NIX systems for about 14 years now, but it can still show me new
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things. Today I had to generate a bunch of random names. I’ve create a small
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perl script which generates permutations of some usual Hungarian first and
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last names, occasionally prefixing it with a ‘Dr.’ title or using double first
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names. For some reasons I forgot to include uniqueness check in the script.
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When I ran it in the command line, I realized the mistake, so I appended
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`| sort | uniq` to the command line. So I had around 200 unique names, but in
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alphabetical order, which was awful for my final goal. Thus, I tried shell
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commands like rand to create a random order, and when many of my tries failed,
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the idea popped in my mind (not being a native English speaker): “I don’t have
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to create «random order», but «shuffle the list». So I started typing `shu`,
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pressed Tab in the Bash shell, and voilà! `shuf` is the winner, it does just
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exactly what I need:
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**NAME**
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shuf - generate random permutations
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Thank you, Linux Core Utils! :)
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