How can I randomly sample the contents of a file?
file, perl, random, sample
Solution
Assuming you basically want to output about 2.5% of all lines, this would do:
print if 0.025 > rand while <$input>;
Problem
I have a file with contents ``` abc def high lmn ... ... ``` There are more than 2 million lines in the files. I want to randomly sample lines from the files and output 50K lines. Any thoughts on how to approach this problem? I was thinking along the lines of Perl and its `rand` function (Or a handy shell command would be neat). Related (Possibly Duplicate) Questions: - Randomly Pick Lines From a File Without Slurping It With Unix - How can I get exactly n random lines from a file with Perl?