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I have a directory with about 2000 files. How can I select a random sample of N files through using either a bash script or a list of piped commands?
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As a test, open Explorer and browse to any of your user folders with a lot of content: Documents, Music, Pictures, whatever. Right-click the folder in the left-hand pane — not the right — and click the new “Select Random” option.
To see a list of all subdirectories and files within your current working directory, use the command ls . In the example above, ls printed the contents of the home directory which contains the subdirectories called documents and downloads and the files called addresses.
You can use shuf (from the GNU coreutils package) for that. Just feed it a list of file names and ask it to return the first line from a random permutation:
ls dirname | shuf -n 1 # probably faster and more flexible: find dirname -type f | shuf -n 1 # etc.. Adjust the -n, --head-count=COUNT value to return the number of wanted lines. For example to return 5 random filenames you would use:
find dirname -type f | shuf -n 5 Here's a script that uses GNU sort's random option:
ls |sort -R |tail -$N |while read file; do # Something involving $file, or you can leave # off the while to just get the filenames done If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
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