fish-shell/sphinx_doc_src/cmds/random.rst
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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) is dependent on the arguments passed.
No arguments indicate a range of [0; 32767].
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 of [START; END].
Three arguments indicate a range of [START; 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)