fish-shell/doc_src/cmds/random.rst
Aaron Gyes 14d60ccb32 More synopsis work.
A great leap forward
2021-12-21 17:24:47 -08:00

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.. _cmd-random:
random - generate random number
===============================
Synopsis
--------
| ``random``
| ``random`` *SEED*
| ``random`` *START* *END*
| ``random`` *START* *STEP* *END*
| ``random`` choice [*ITEMS*...]
Description
-----------
``random`` generates a pseudo-random integer from a uniform distribution. The
range (inclusive) depends on the arguments.
No arguments indicate a range of 0 to 32767 (inclusive).
If one argument is specified, the internal engine will be seeded with the
argument for future invocations of ``random`` and no output will be produced.
Two arguments indicate a range from START to END (both START and END included).
Three arguments indicate a range from START to END with a spacing of STEP
between possible outputs.
``random choice`` will select one random item from the succeeding arguments.
Note that seeding the engine will NOT give the same result across different
systems.
You should not consider ``random`` cryptographically secure, or even
statistically accurate.
Example
-------
The following code will count down from a random even number between 10 and 20 to 1:
::
for i in (seq (random 10 2 20) -1 1)
echo $i
end
And this will open a random picture from any of the subdirectories:
::
open (random choice **.jpg)
Or, to only get even numbers from 2 to 20::
random 2 2 20
Or odd numbers from 1 to 3::
random 1 2 3 # or 1 2 4