From: Sebastian Hungerecker <sepp2k@...>
Date: 2007-08-31T01:33:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Need help randomly selecting unique values from an array

Paul wrote:
>    foo = [2, 7, 10, 14]    # (or could equal a diff't set of 4
> numbers)
>
> Now for this task, I'm not interested in the first element at all.
> I'd rather just leave it alone and not delete it though.

So you use foo[1..-1]. That will create a new array not containing the first
item and leave the original array untouched.

> What I need to do is pick 1 to 3 elements randomly from the array.  I
> can't reuse the numbers.

foo[1..-1].sort_by {rand}.first(n)
where n is a number between 1 and 3.

HTH,
Sebastian
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