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From: decot@hpisod2.HP.COM (Dave Decot)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How do I pick a word at random from a list of words?
Message-ID: <10650054@hpisod2.HP.COM>
Date: 19 May 89 18:27:14 GMT
References: <19669@adm.BRL.MIL>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 39

Well, this program gives you a random line from a file.  The first argument
to the program should be the number of lines in the file.

Compile this program as "select", and use it as:

   select `wc -l file` < file

Unfortunately, this only works on systems with gettimeofday(), rand(), and
srand() (such as BSD-derived systems or HP-UX); substitute your local random
number generators and time functions.

Dave Decot
------------------------

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char *argv[];
{
    char s[80];
    struct timeval t;
    int i, j;

	gettimeofday(&t, 0);
	j = srand(t.tv_usec);

	freopen(argv[2], "r", stdin);

	gets(s);

	i = rand() % atoi(argv[1]) - 1;

	while(i-- > 0)
	    gets(s);
	
	puts(s);
}