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18.12. Randomizing All Lines in a File
18.12.1. Problem
You want to randomly reorder all lines in a file. You have a file of funny quotes, for example, and you want to pick out one at random.
18.12.2. Solution
Read all the lines in the file into an array with file( ) , and then shuffle the elements of the array:
$lines = file('quotes-of-the-day.txt');
$lines = pc_array_shuffle($lines);18.12.3. Discussion
The pc_array_shuffle( ) function from Section 4.21 is more random than PHP's built-in shuffle( ) function, because it uses the Fisher-Yates shuffle, which equally distributes the elements throughout the array.
18.12.4. See Also
Section 4.20 for pc_array_shuffle( ); documentation on shuffle( ) at http://www.php.net/shuffle.
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| 18.11. Picking a Random Line from a File |  | 18.13. Processing Variable Length Text Fields |
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