From: Jason Williams <jason@...>
Date: 2003-09-16T23:51:29+09:00
Subject: Re: scrambler one-liner

In article <200309161631.48824.fxn@hashref.com>, Xavier Noria wrote:
> -pe 'gsub!(/\w+/){|w|r=1..w.size-1;w[r]=w[r].split(//).sort_by{rand}.to_s;w}'
> 
> The cool Array.sort_by { rand } trick is a shuffle I saw in Freenode#ruby-lang
> last week, I would like very much to remember the nick of who showed it but I
> can't remember.
> 
> It seems one-liners are not at the heart of the Ruby community, but hey,
> that's funny in the end. Can you shorten it?

Alternatively, you could write a version that accepts a "Maximum
distance" for letters to be moved from their original position. Most
people notice after playing for a short while that it doesn't work
so well for longer words; I'm curious whether it's actually a limit
of "total shuffle distance".