Re: sort/shuf/shred: support fixed random-seed

[Pádraig Brady]

On 07/02/15 02:13, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Attached is a proof-of-concept implementation supporting '--random=seed=N' 
> option for sort/shuf/shred,
> to enable reproducible (pseudo) random runs.
> It was discussed a while ago, here:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2013-11/msg00068.html
> 
> comments are welcomed,

Reproducibility is a useful though not often required goal.
Playing devil's advocate, you could get it with:

  get_random() { seed="$1"; openssl enc -aes-256-ctr -pass pass:"$seed" -nosalt 
</dev/zero 2>/dev/null; }

  shuf -i1-100 --random-source=<(get_random 42)

While a separate dependency, it's widely available and we could document it.

The advantage is that it's an existing mechanism
and uses more silicon to generate the random numbers.

cheers,
Pádraig.