[Haskell-cafe] How to select n random words from a file ...

[Eugene Kirpichov]

Hi,

Look up "reservoir sampling", it will most probably help.

On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 6:21 AM, Noon Silk <noonslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  I'm clearly new to haskell, and I suppose those is a basic question,
> but after a bit of searching I've been unable to figure out the "best"
> way to do this. I was first trying to find out how to, say, get a
> random element from a list, but I'm starting to think that may not be
> the best way (because list access isn't constant time, among other
> reasons). So, I wonder if there is a more direct way to just get a
> random word from a wordfile (i.e. one word per line) ... can anyone
> suggest a method?
>
>  Ideally I'd like to be able to adapt this to get n random words from
> several files (i.e. randomly select n words from all files; i.e. just
> read them into one merged array and choose from there?)
>
>  Thanks for any advice ...
>
> --
> Noon Silk
>
> Fancy a quantum lunch? https://sites.google.com/site/quantumlunch/
>
> "Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy
> of being this signature."
>
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-- 
Eugene Kirpichov
Principal Engineer, Mirantis Inc. http://www.mirantis.com/
Editor, http://fprog.ru/