Algorithm to iterate N-dimensional array in pseudo random order

Question

I have an array that I would like to iterate in random order. That is, I would like my iteration to visit each element only once in a seemingly random order.

Would it be possible to implement an iterator that would iterate elements like this without storing the order or other data in a lookup table first?

Would it be possible to do it for N-dimensional arrays where N>1?

UPDATE: Some of the answers mention how to do this by storing indices. A major point of this question is how to do it without storing indices or other data.

Answer 1

I decided to solve this, because it annoyed me to death not remembering the name of solution that I had heard before. I did however remember in the end, more on that in the bottom of this post.

My solution depends on the mathematical properties of some cleverly calculated numbers

range = array size
prime = closestPrimeAfter(range)
root = closestPrimitiveRootTo(range/2)
state = root

With this setup we can calculate the following repeatedly and it will iterate all elements of the array exactly once in a seemingly random order, after which it will loop to traverse the array in the same exact order again.

state = (state * root) % prime

I implemented and tested this in Java, so I decided to paste my code here for future reference.

import java.math.BigInteger;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Random;

public class PseudoRandomSequence {

    private long            state;
    private final long  range;
    private final long  root;
    private final long  prime;
    //Debugging counter
    private int             dropped = 0;

    public PseudoRandomSequence(int r) {
        range = r;
        prime = closestPrimeAfter(range);
        root = modPow(generator(prime), closestPrimeTo(prime / 2), prime);
        reset();
        System.out.println("-- r:" + range);
        System.out.println("   p:" + prime);
        System.out.println("   k:" + root);
        System.out.println("   s:" + state);
    }

    // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_root_modulo_n
    private static long modPow(long base, long exp, long mod) {
        return BigInteger.valueOf(base).modPow(BigInteger.valueOf(exp), BigInteger.valueOf(mod)).intValue();
    }

    //http://e-maxx-eng.github.io/algebra/primitive-root.html
    private static long generator(long p) {
        ArrayList<Long> fact = new ArrayList<Long>();
        long phi = p - 1, n = phi;
        for (long i = 2; i * i <= n; ++i) {
            if (n % i == 0) {
                fact.add(i);
                while (n % i == 0) {
                    n /= i;
                }
            }
        }
        if (n > 1) fact.add(n);
        for (long res = 2; res <= p; ++res) {
            boolean ok = true;
            for (long i = 0; i < fact.size() && ok; ++i) {
                ok &= modPow(res, phi / fact.get((int) i), p) != 1;
            }
            if (ok) {
                return res;
            }
        }
        return -1;
    }

    public long get() {
        return state - 1;
    }

    public void advance() {
        //This loop simply skips all results that overshoot the range, which should never happen if range is a prime number.
        dropped--;
        do {
            state = (state * root) % prime;
            dropped++;
        } while (state > range);
    }

    public void reset() {
        state = root;
        dropped = 0;
    }

    private static boolean isPrime(long num) {
        if (num == 2) return true;
        if (num % 2 == 0) return false;
        for (int i = 3; i * i <= num; i += 2) {
            if (num % i == 0) return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

    private static long closestPrimeAfter(long n) {
        long up;
        for (up = n + 1; !isPrime(up); ++up)
            ;
        return up;
    }

    private static long closestPrimeBefore(long n) {
        long dn;
        for (dn = n - 1; !isPrime(dn); --dn)
            ;
        return dn;
    }

    private static long closestPrimeTo(long n) {
        final long dn = closestPrimeBefore(n);
        final long up = closestPrimeAfter(n);
        return (n - dn) > (up - n) ? up : dn;
    }

    private static boolean test(int r, int loops) {
        final int array[] = new int[r];
        Arrays.fill(array, 0);
        System.out.println("TESTING: array size: " + r + ", loops: " + loops + "\n");
        PseudoRandomSequence prs = new PseudoRandomSequence(r);
        final long ct = loops * r;
        //Iterate the array 'loops' times, incrementing the value for each cell for every visit. 
        for (int i = 0; i < ct; ++i) {
            prs.advance();
            final long index = prs.get();
            array[(int) index]++;
        }
        //Verify that each cell was visited exactly 'loops' times, confirming the validity of the sequence
        for (int i = 0; i < r; ++i) {
            final int c = array[i];
            if (loops != c) {
                System.err.println("ERROR: array element @" + i + " was " + c + " instead of " + loops + " as expected\n");
                return false;
            }
        }
        //TODO: Verify the "randomness" of the sequence
        System.out.println("OK:  Sequence checked out with " + prs.dropped + " drops (" + prs.dropped / loops + " per loop vs. diff " + (prs.prime - r) + ") \n");
        return true;
    }

    //Run lots of random tests
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Random r = new Random();
        r.setSeed(1337);
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
            PseudoRandomSequence.test(r.nextInt(1000000) + 1, r.nextInt(9) + 1);
        }
    }

}

As stated in the top, about 10 minutes after spending a good part of my night actually getting a result, I DID remember where I had read about the original way of doing this. It was in a small C implementation of a 2D graphics "dissolve" effect as described in Graphics Gems vol. 1 which in turn is an adaption to 2D with some optimizations of a mechanism called "LFSR" (wikipedia article here, original dissolve.c source code here).