I would like to know how to order selected, ordinary text randomly. I have used Automator to create a command that sorts selected text alphabetically but would like to sort some text randomly.
Thank you,
Daniel
No way with Automator that I can easily think of. You'll need to drop into Applescript for this as far as I can see.
If you show the workflow you have for sorting text something might be thought of to make it random.
regards
Here is one approach on how to make a random, no-repeat list of words from an ordered word list.
set myList to {"first", "second", "third", "fourth", "fifth", "six"}
set rList to {}
set n to 0 as integer
repeat until (count rList) is equal to (count myList)
set n to (random number from 1 to (count myList))
if item n of myList is not in rList then
copy item n of myList to end of rList
end if
end repeat
log (rList)
Output:
(*second, six, third, first, fourth, fifth*)
If you're dealing only with lines in a text file, there are a few ways of doing this in Terminal (which can be run as a Run Shell Script action in Automator)
Hello
You may try an Automator service with a Run Shell Script action as follows.
0) Automator service
- Service receives selected [text] in [any application]
- [x] replace selected text
1) Run shell Script action
- Shell: /usr/bin/ruby
- Pass input: as argument
- Code: as follows
ARGV.map { |a| a.dup }.each do |a| if ( d = a[/\015\012|\015|\012/] ) e = a.chomp!(d) ? d : '' print a.split(d, -1).shuffle.join(d), e else print a.split(' ').shuffle.join(' ') end end
Resulting workflow will look something like this:
The service will -
a) shuffle lines if multiple lines are selected; or
b) shuffle words (delimited by white spaces) if single line is selected.
In case of a), trailing line-ending character is preserved as the last character. And in case of b), delimiting white spaces are reduced to single space.
Regards,
H
How to use Automator to randomly order selected text?
