permute/scramble arraylist elements in java
suppose I have arraylist of integers...is there a way that I can generate a random permutation/arrangement of the e开发者_C百科lements in the arraylist
so if the list is {1,2,3,4,5,6}
calling some method randomPermute() would change it to something random like
{1,3,2,6,5,4}
Collections.shuffle()
does the job:
public static void shuffle(List<?> list)
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Randomly permutes the specified list using a default source of randomness. All permutations occur with approximately equal likelihood.
http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Collections.html#shuffle(java.util.List)
For example
ArrayList<Integer>anArrayList = new ArrayList<Integer>();
anArrayList.add(1);
anArrayList.add(2);
anArrayList.add(3);
anArrayList.add(4);
anArrayList.add(5);
System.out.println(anArrayList);
Collections.shuffle(anArrayList);
System.out.println(anArrayList);
Sample Output
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[3, 5, 1, 2, 4]
You can use the Knuth shuffle: go through the positions 1 through n−1, and for each position i swap the element currently there with an arbitrarily chosen element from positions i through n, inclusive.
Edit: The answer by hooch is better. :)
A simple example:
ArrayList<MyObject> myObjects = new ArrayList<MyObject>();
//code -- load myObjects...
Collections.shuffle(myObjects);
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