randomising tracks: scripting question

[Frank Shute]

On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 06:01:45PM +0000, RW wrote:
>
> On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 09:40:43 -0800
> Chip Camden <sterling at camdensoftware.com> wrote:
> 
> > Quoth Frank Shute on Sunday, 26 December 2010:
> > > I generally play my tracks of an album like so:
> > > 
> > > for track in $(cat trombone_shorty-backatown.m3u); do
> > > mplayer $track
> > > done
> > > 
> > > They then play in the correct order.
> > > 
> > > How would I go about randomising the order of play using
> > > sh (preferably) or perl?
> > > 
> > > Sorry for the OT posting but I thought a brainteaser might clear the
> > > fog caused by excessive Xmas indulgence ;)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > 
> > change "cat t...n.m3u" to "random < t..n.m3u"
> > 
> 
> That should be 
> 
> random -f trombone_shorty-backatown.m3u
> 
> see random(6) for what happens when it reads directly from stdin
> (without "-f -")
> 

Excellent. I didn't know about random(6), I was getting lost in the
manpages: there are manpages for random in 3 different sections!
Should have used apropos.


Regards,

-- 

 Frank

 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html