MadSci Net: Computer Science (View this file without Frames) |
Hi Nauzad,
If I understand the problem right, you'd like to have a little script that picks a file at random and then does something to it. Here is a little code fragment in Perl. It makes a couple of assumptions but you should get the general idea and be able to customize it for your needs. In particular, it assumes that you're on a Unix system; but, since Perl is readily available on almost all platforms, you should be able to tweak this to work for your particular situation relatively easily. Here's the code:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w # Initialize index variable $x = 0; # Loop through all the files in the current directory # and store their names in an array foreach $file (`ls`) { $someArray[$x] = $file; $x++; } # Initialize the random function srand; # Get the random number (it's -1 because the array # index starts at 0 $y = int(rand(@someArray) - 1); # You should replace this line with whatever you'd # like to do with the file; This line just prints # out the name of the file. print "The file is $someArray[$y]\n";
Well, I hope that does what you wanted it to do. Of course, we could make the program a lot more sophisticated (it could check for directories, for starters) and make it do more than just print the name of the file. But, it should work as a nice starting point for most purposes. If it doesn't, please feel free to write back to me.
Regards,
Rick.
MadSci Home | Information |
Search |
MAD Library | MAD Labs |
MAD FAQs |
Ask a ? |
Join Us!
Help Support MadSci